TeknologikL

I have one and agree that it is a good system. Be aware that the interface cable is a proprietary design and although the one for an i Pod looks the same it won't work. That's a shame because cables for the iPod can be found anywhere but the one for the Sansa is difficult to find outside of ordering over the Internet.

I thought I saw that the ipod cable was compatible? Anyway, I have a creative Zen for the screensize as I watch more on it than I listen...which really isnt' that much.

Flash memory MP3 players have some advantages over hard disc based ones but personally I need the larger capacity hard disc based players offer. I was surprised when the largest MP3 player I could find on SanDisk's website was 8GB. I couldn't live without my 160GB iPod Classic. It holds my entire music collection of over 1500 albums, but it will cost you a bit more.

And the hard drive *will* die. Apple is still using Hitachi and Toshiba hard drives that they have been using since 1st generation iPods, and they are absolutely terrible. They simply can't handle switching from songs to folders to movies so much. Especially on shuffle will they die faster.

The only alternative really would be solid state hard drives. SanDisk makes a 160 GB SSD drive and it's $600. So for now, I would have to lean towards using MP3 players like the one so nicely reviewed here.

That's what the Best Buy 3 year service plan is for.

Of course. My post was really aimed to people who don't wish to pay an extra $60 for that. Should have made that more clear.

"It is a slight inconvenience that you can't listen to music while the MP3 player is charging, but at that point you can just listen to music on your computer."

This so-called feature had always irritated me. A quick Google search revealed a hack of only partly connecting the USB cable so that the right corner of the connector is not connected to the e260. That approach occassionally worked for me.

I found another way to do it today! Make sure the e260 is turned off and then insert a Micro-SD chip into the slot (I had already filled the card with tunes). Connect the e260 to the computer using the USB cable. The e260 will refresh its database because it found the Micro-SD card and then begin charging. The cool thing is that it does not go into "connected" mode, so you can listen to any of the music on the e260 or on the Micro-SD card.