MP3 Player Selection

you failed to provide information on what features you want. is this for music only or for video? is a scroll wheel or similar interface okay or is touch screen a requirement?

as far as no apple products... its incredibly hard to beat a solid product such as the ipod classic. the thing can play 8 hours a day for over a week and a half before it needs charging and does come in large storage sizes. no other products that i've seen (although i havent looked for a little while) even came close to its ease of use and reliability. i'm not an apple fan in the least but i at least know not to totally disregard them.

as far as non-apple options...what about such products as the microsoft zune? you will want something with a HDD and not flash memory if you want high storage space. if you want good battery life you want to avoid large touch screens and stick with big boxy units.

Music only, scroll wheel or touch screen functionality does not matter too me really. I've looked into the zune and am having a hard time finding the 120GB option they made. On my position on Apple products is not so much because of a dislike of the iPod. It's more a pure hatred of iTunes.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-...

it is possible to load music onto an ipod without itunes.

i am not a fan of the itunes program in general as well. the layout and general function of the program isnt the issue but the little quirks like not being able to pull songs off my ipod to load into itunes is! apple is way to draconian with the control of what you can and can not do.

the only reason why i even still use it is because their music library is just so dang huge. it is the only place i can actually find, buy and download international music. google play nor amazonmp3 are even close in comparison.

if you want to find a zune dont forget to try amazon, ebay and other online outlets.

Thanks, ssddx, but I found a Cowon x7 on ebay that looks like it would fit my needs pretty well.