I currently own a 16GB sony MP3 which is the best MP3 player ive ever owned, however with 16GB as the max it just doesnt quite do it for me. Im looking at upgrading to either a 120GB Zune or a 180GB iPod (groan...). What I want to know is how reliable are the HDDs? I used to own one of the first ipod classics with HDDs and after a year of two songs would skip, transfers would corrupt and eventuallly it just plain died. Do the newer MP3 players with HDDs still suffer the same fate? I know that HDDS dont like being bumped around, so why is it that they continue to put them into portable devices? Any info would be great, I would much prefer a larger (80GB+) solid state player if they exist.
I have a 20GB iriver H320 (good luck trying to get one) and it is awesome. I also have a 20GB S-Media cocopod (GP2000) which sucks but is, unfortunately, indestructible. (battery is terrible, firmware crashes, it can't read id3 tags, the software can't add more than one song at a time (and has a horrible bright orange interface) and the unit can't have more than about 1000 songs on it because the firmware can't handle that many). Both are hard disk based. I was at a friend's house last september, and his brother killed my cocopod, so naturally I thanked him and ordered the iriver since I could now justify it. Unfortunately a few weeks later the cocopod started working again. The one redeeming feature of the cocopod was an SD card slot and the ability to play music off an SD card, which greatly improved the battery life. neither the zune nor the ipod are anywhere near as good as they're made out to be, and be wary of any player that requires you to use software to put tracks on it (as opposed to drag and drop). if the software is buggy or doesn't work (as one of my friends is finding with itunes) you can't change the music on your player.
