the weird thing about the connection is that it is quite fix. if i don't touch the ear phone plug in a brute way there is no problem. i am only afraid that i will bend it, when having the mp3 player in the pocket for example, and that this will definitely destroy the plug and may destroy the socket. i won't use the jukebox for jogging (i prefer listening to the sounds of nature when i run) but i will probably use it walking around. in case i have a solid structure to hold it everything should be fine. i have another week or so to decide...

btw i still find it totally amazing that this little thing can contain the equivalent of 500 cds in 160-192 bit/s quality. for the time being i have filled it with everything i downloaded from the internet in the past 1-2 years and it is a little more than half full. 2000 songs or something. i love to put it on overall shuffle mode and try to guess the artists. to guess the song names is impossible. a lot of those songs i have never heard as i downloaded them blindly...

when i had the atari st i dreamt of a huge 20 mb hard disk. i never got one, it was okay to work with 3' 1/2'' diskettes and the memory. here we have 20 gb in the size of half a cigarette pack.

If the connection doesn't work, send it back, definitely - or maybe try another set of headphones.

My own 5GB iPod died not too long ago. I've always used Apple gear myself but there seems to be plenty of alternatives now, so I'll shop around.

And Phil, I played some of the A Slow Rip stuff for friends not too long ago. It wasn't just my imagination then, they liked it too...

i just bought some sennheiser mx 500 earplugs and the connection does work! the archos gmini xs 200 i bought is at 169€ at amazon.de right now. i paid 179€ a week ago. apparently there is a new one called xs 202 coming out with a different design, slightly more battery time (10 instead of 8 hours) and a case which comes out in july. that's why the price for the old one is going down. i suppose for that price it is the best mp3 player with 20gb on the market right now..

And Phil, I played some of the A Slow Rip stuff for friends not too long ago. It wasn't just my imagination then, they liked it too...

great - thanks for that.