all jukeboxes

This is the first MP3 player that I have bought, although I have used MusicMatch on my laptop for a couple of years.

What attracted me was that it was by far the cheapest player with this size of HDD, with this many features (MP3, WAV, CF card reader, Mic in, Analog + SPDIF line in). It also came with a universal (120-240V) power supply, an audio cable and adapter plug, and MusicMatch Plus 8.0 on a CD.

It came with OS 1.3.0 installed, but I upgraded to OS 1.9.0 straight away. This is currently (Apr 04) a free download from Archos. This includes the Photo Wallet and Recorder plug-ins by default. Easy upgrade. 2 minutes. Sound quality is excellent through the supplied earbuds, although I like a little more bass. Will try later with my big Sennheiser headphones.

To address all the negative points that people wrote:
Comments about the review

The only real problem so far has been getting my 2-year old laptop (HP Omnibook 500, Win2k, Intel 82371AB USB chipset) to recognise it as a HDD. Windows didn't find the drive although the Gmini displayed 'USB connected', and the PC wouldn't shut down afterwards. It took me about 2 hours, hacking about with it, downloading drivers from Intel and Archos and trying to install them. I don't know what I did exactly, as the Intel drivers wouldn't install (already there), but I think I added the Archos supplied driver for a HDD as 'Other Devices' in Control Panel -> Add hardware. Anyway, after a reboot, the PC found the Gmini and no more Windows lock-ups. In contrast, a new Dell desktop PC with WinXP found the Gmini first time, without drivers.

Good (and make sure to read the Bad also):

0. Plays both WMA and MP3 files. I have a lot of WMAs and the iPod and older Archos were no good for me.

1. External hard drive for PC and Mac fast USB 2.0, no extra drivers needed! Plug and play, drag and drop whatever you want, it's that simple! Beats the Zen and others in this category. Unlike regular external drives, this one is self-powered because it has a battery - you just need to bring the USB cable to a friend's PC and you're in business.

2. You can browse and play music based on directory structure. Thank you Archos for not thinking users are morons and can't organise their music! This is the only hardware player that has this feature, much like Winamp on the PC. I hate the players that parse your MP3 tags and organize songs by artist etc - because most of the time the tags are missing or wrong, who knows who ripped that MP3... Of course, the Archos can *also* parse the tags and organise your music according to genre, artist, etc, like any other player :)

3. Rich and powerful UI. It is not quite as simple as that of most other players. However, you get clock, equalizer, volume, time remaining, track data, and what not on the same screen. The display itself if big and easy to read.

4. Sound quality is very good, perhaps better than the other players I tried. The default headphones are not bad - they have a volume control, which is nice. Use the equalizer to fine tune the sound. I love the way it pumps out my techno, and it passes the U2 test with flying colors :)

5. Built-in Compact Flash card reader and microphone. You need to load (buy?) extra software to use them. Nice add-ons that other players don't have. I can imagine backing up my camera after it fills up while on vacation, or recording a meeting at work.

6. Looks good :) Price + features + usability is very competitive - beats everything IMHO.

Bad:

0. It just froze on me 1 hr ago and there is nothing I can do. No combination of buttons, USB on/off, power, nothing!!! The screen is completely frozen at the instant when it was playing an MP3. Hopefully the battery will drain itself so I can reboot and salvage my files?

1. Even before the freezing problem, I noticed that the unit sometimes stops playing and displays a dialog File bla is not supported or cannot be played or something like that. I do not recall having such files. Unfortunately, the screen is too small to see the whole name of the file and its extension. I thought of this as a minor annoyance until the unit froze completely.

Bottom line: I've used all major hard disk MP3 players for extended periods, with the exception of the overpriced iPod. Not a single one is ready for prime time - in fact all were disapointments in usability and stability. This will be my last MP3 jukebox.