Welcome to the forums little Mouche

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For the battery I would get a cameron sino brand. The cheaper ones do have a habbit of swelling up and crushing your hard drive.As far as I know there are no cases of cameronsino's doing this. I got mine from here
http://stores.ebay.com.au/id=43677597 and Saints has a good thread on buying batteries here
What battery to buy, Where to buy it? .
There are directions on doing the swap here
http://www.misticriver.net/wiki/inde...ry_Replacement . Dont't forget to switch the polarity if you get a ipod type battery.
So far as the songs freezing you could try reinstalling the firmware but make sure you have the charger connected and probably wait untill you've fitted the new battery as you don't want to run the chance of your player shutting down half way through a update. If it only freezes on certain songs then you could try re-ripping and see what happens. There are probably some other fixes for this as well but I'm don't know them but maybe (most likely) someone else does

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Hmmm the I.R remote is/was a plan of Shadesbass' but I think that time constraints have put it on hold. (you can't let building a remote cut into your drinking time , can you?

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