I'm sorry you read some of the stuff I wrote as harsh. I didn't mean to be harsh at all. Maybe I should have chosen some of the words with more care.

The empeg to Neo comparison was to say that if one appreciates how much more the empeg offers, it should be easy to appreciate some of the things the iPod offers over other hard drive players as well.

As I said, I'm not going to buy an iPod. Period. But I can appreciate the things it has over the AJR (UI, ease of use, physical size, quality)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to buy an iPod either. :) I do appreciate its cool features, but I don't have a need for a portable player. This would have been an excellent device when I used to do a lot of walking and busing around. Now I do a lot of driving and spend most of my time in other places where I wouldn't or can't use headphones for whatever reason. If I had one, I'd use it so infrequently, that I couldn't justify it. It was already hard to justify a Nintendo Gameboy Advance. :)

But prior to the cool features of the iPod, I did like what the Archos players had to offer (again, appreciating something I wasn't going to buy).

Bruno