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Sansa m240
I got a used one of these on ebay for $35 shipped the day after Christmas. I'd had a first-gen refurbished Nano for a little while, but I hated it -- too flimsy, bad battery life, forced to buy a case to keep it unscratched (and the case wouldn't close properly if you used non-Apple earphones because of the size of the jack), etc. Rockbox was pretty good on it, but I never got more than 8 hours battery life out of it. Sold the Nano on ebay and found the Sansa.
Not a bad little player. Fairly thick compared to the Nano, but the back of it is curved and thus fits well in the hand. Menus and navigation are really easy -- I've not had to use the manual. Takes AAA batteries, so you can use rechargeable NiMH ones. In MSC USB transfer mode, it shows up as a removable disk and you just drag and drop files and/or folders to it. When you eject the device, it reads the ID3 tags and creates a database that's browsable by artist, album, song, genre, (voice) recordings, or playlists. It has a sleep timer. No bookmarking function for non-Audible audiobooks, but it does resume. Sound quality is fine -- the included earbuds are actually quite good, very nice bass response. Now if only they'd stay in my ears... Playback is not quite gapless, but the gaps are far shorter than with the iPod -- I'd say maybe 1/10 second. My only real complaint is that you can't delete tracks off the player without being connected to the computer -- Rockbox has me a little spoiled!
I'm using it primarily for audiobooks and podcasts, so it suits my needs.
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