New mp3 player in a box

For Christmas this year, Cyndi and I got new mp3 players. I had been looking for one for her, since I had an 2nd or 3rd gen Archos that still works but is getting a little short on space. I told Gary about this and he told me about a great deal on one that matched the specs I was looking for (bigger than 20gig, no software required, plays ogg as well as mp3). The player is the iAudio X5. We got the 30 gig version for $270 each (buy.com had the 20gig version for $300 at the time--it's $260 now).

Anyway, since it's been about 3 weeks since we got them, AG's been asking me to write a review. But, I haven't been able to due to file copying difficulties. Not file copying difficulties between my machine and my iAudio (that name is too hard to say), but between my streaming server (where all the mp3s are) and my desktop machine. I get copying files and it works for a minute or two and then starts throwing errors. So, I give up and intend to mess with it another day. The streaming server is my lone windows box (still hanging around because I haven't found/written software to control the station) and my desktop is (obviously) linux.

So, the players have just been sitting in their boxes, calling to me through my haze of laze (-e +iness). Tonight, it looks like I've finally figured out a workaround. The normal file sharing problem still exists, but I realized that if I go through the FTP server on the streaming server, it seems to work. So, to make it a little easier, I'm just mirroring, through FTP between two machines about 2 feet apart, our entire mp3 collection (about 75gigs). When it's done copying (probably tomorrow), I'll go through and delete everything that I don't care to have on the player and what remains will be the master directory for the mp3 players. Definitely not the most efficient way to do it, but I don't really care to figure out the windows <-> linux file sharing issue right now.

So, hopefully, I'll be using the iAudio (maybe I should just call it the x5, although x is so played out--arg, dumb names...) within a couple days and will be able to post a full review this weekend.