Forgive me if this opinion isn't of the best standard everyone!I've taken a break from Dooyoo lately and may be a little rusty, plus I've never written about a piece of electrical equipment before.Anyhow here goes nothing....

I was entirely sick of having a personal CD player which jumped all the time, damaged my CD's and was used up batteries really quickly. So with my most recent wage packet I decided to splash out on a pretty new MP3 player.

I shopped around in several electrical shops and the Archos MP3 player caught my eye everytime. Being sensible I asked lots of advise from the salespeople but they honestly seemed more interested in selling me a Minidisc Player than an MP3 player.However I stuck to my guns and blew just under £250 on the Archos Player.

The Player holds around 166 hours of music, thats 10GB for those of you who are techincally minded. The machine itself weighs 350g, and is 11.5 x 8.3 x 3.4 cm in size. It is silver and blue in colour and includes internal rechargable batteries which last for around 10 hours. Also included in pack is an AC/DC adapter, USB cable, Stereo Cord,Headphones,Carrying Pouch, Software and Manual.

The first thing that the salesperson tried to use to put me off was the price but I rather think that was because I looked scruffy and they didn't think they'd make a sale on something so expensive. However when I perserved they were negative about the weight ,though I feel that for something which is a hard drive which can hold hours of music neither the weight nor the price are an issue.

The machine is very easy to use and the manual included is very helpful. All you need to do is load the software and then you can get started on downloading your music.
There are two main methods of putting music onto the Archos- one is to copy from your current CD collection which you do by inserting the CD into the computer and using the MusicMatch Software provided. T
his takes around 15minutes per album which is quick and a great way of always having your favourite music with you. You can also download music off the internet using websites such as Kazaa or Winmix which takes longer depending on your download rates. I suppose if you had broadband it would be really fast! I took about 2 hours to learn how to use the player without referring to the manual and had no real problems at all.

I would defiently recommend the Archos if you have the money to spend as it is simple to use and great quality. The higher specification version is £300 and holds double the music- but in my opinion when are you going to ever need more that 166 hours of music?! The headphones supplied are also excellent giving high quality sound.

If you want to have great music with you all the time-get this!