Also lacking is a good internet guide on buying mp3 players. I think my best solution is Cowon S9, mediamonkey (for pc interface), klipsch custom 2 or 3 monitors or se530pth (expensive) but must get shure olive foamies. Rip your music in mediamonkey using wma lossless. Set mediamonkey to automatically convert to flac (lossless) when syncing to your cowon. This is actually easy to do.

IMHO, this combination gives the best audio (and video) quality, battery life, absence of digital rights management (DRM) problems, absence of proprietary software problems, for the money. Plus, you don’t have to buy everything from apple (itunes). The zune is a good buy, but the zune software is horrible (why they didn’t integrate this with windows media player boggles the mind).

Perhaps someone can post an even more thorough buying guide, as I think even http://www.anythingbutipod.com is a good start, but misses the mark.

Thanks