[Andy A.]

I have been very happy with my Nomad Jukebox Zen extra.

I ended up getting a deal on the 40gb version for $240 from bestbuy. Opened packages rule.

If you don't mind the jog lever interface, it's a breeze to use. The sound quality blows ipod's out of the water, even with out any dsp functions turned on. The battery life is advertised at 14 hours. I get 8+ hours with the equalizer settings on. 40gb is absurd overkill for me, having only 4gb worth the music, but it also functions as a nifty external harddrive. Larger then my own laptops drive by 10 gigs to. Kinda silly to have a player with more memory then the computer you use it with huh? In anycase, the zen's are all high capacity, the smallest I can find are 30gb and they run around $270 new.

You might have luck on ebay. Ask at a bestbuyesqe place about any discounted players, you might get lucky like I did with a return.

My suggestion is to save up and spend some quality money on a player and earphones. For an extra $50-$80 you can get a huge step up in capacity and sound quality. At 200, you might be stuck with a flash based player or an early ipod/ipod clone, which is no fun.

-Andy A.