High capacity MP3 players (60Gb+)

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   For the past 2 years, I've been the proud owner of a Cowon iAudio X5 60Gb MP3 player. It's a terrific piece of kit which simply connects to any computer via a USB lead, and is recognised and acts as an external hard-drive, allowing you to drag and drop music as quickly and easily as you please. No routing through special software (a la iTunes), etc. 

In recent months, I've begun to experience a problem which plagues most hard-drive based units, that of battery drain. I'm currently able to get only about 5 hours use after a full charge, and from what I've read I would expect that to start dropping fairly quickly.

I love the convenience of a high capacity player (I use my MP3 player for 2-3 hours every day, and there's no need to constantly rotate my selections), and if I'm going to stick with such a unit, I'm left with 2 options.

The first is to change the battery. This isn't as simple as it may appear. The battery in the X5 (as in most hard-drive players) is sealed within the unit. Removal involves taking the case apart, lifting out the hard-drive, and unsoldering the leads from the terminals. Unfortunately, getting an exact replacement battery for the X5 is damn well impossible. Apparently, the closest approximation to it (it terms of size and mAh rating) is the one used in a Nintendo DS Lite, and even this would involve removing the battery's casing and relocating its protection circuit so that the whole thing can fit into the allocated space. I'm not totally against doing this, but there's always Option 2 (see below)

By the way, Cowon themselves could change the battery for me, but this would involve sending my player half way round the world and a hefty charge as the warrenty is no longer valid. Another lesson that I've learned is that getting hold of a genuine battery with an mAh rating of 1000+ is really tough due to the number of fakes out there. In an abortive attempt to change the battery earlier this week, I ordered a 1200 mAh for a Sony Ericsson K700 phone from an Amazon Marketplace dealer. This should have been a reasonable replacement for the existing battery. However, once I dismantled the battery in order to fit it (removed stickers, outer casing, etc.) I was able to see by the manufacturer's stamp that it was in fact only a 600mAh, two-thirds the rating of the original battery.   I'd been ripped off , and there's not a hell of a lot I can do about it except to be very careful about where and what I buy next. In the end, I decided not to put the new battery in the device.

Option 2 is - of course - buy a new player.....and this is where I'm hoping to get some feedback from you guys. 

What types of high capacity players are used by people out there in PA Land? What are your recommendations for good devices? How about warnings on what to avoid? Personally, I'm NOT a fan of Apple products, but I'm beginning to wonder if their new 160Gb iPod might be my best bet as a replacement. 

The other manufacturers who make high capacity devices - and which don't seem to have the software drawbacks of the iPod are Archos, Wolverine, Creative and Vosonic (Cowon, unfortunately, seem to have dropped out of the very-high capacity market - the X5 60Gb is no longer available). Does anyone have any experiences with these devices that they could share with me, or do you know of other devices that I haven't mentioned? 

Once again, I'm looking specifically at devices of greater than 60Gb capacity.

Thanks! 

Glenn,
Glasgow, Scotland

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