Dithering about portable MP3s

[ciphergoth]

Anti-war march today, 2pm, Waterloo Place, Edinburgh.

Some time ago, the replacement 6GB hard drive in my Archos Jukebox Recorder MP3 player died. It's now out of warranty. I'm considering spending GBP 91.64 on getting a 40GB laptop-style hard drive from Simply and fitting it as per these instructions (also these). Having taken my old laptop apart and put it back together, I'm pretty confident I could pull this off, and I could use open source firmware. But on the other hand, I could just spend GBP 50 on an MP3 CD player. Help me decide! Update: I have sent off for the hard drive, and taken apart my Archos to remove the old drive which turned out to be really easy.

Incidentally, 40 GB works out by my calculations to be around three weeks of continuous, 24 hour music. Expect a visitation by the music slurping fairies. What's the best free LAME-based tool for ripping CDs under Windows?

Comments

[ex-suum-cuiq980.livejournal.com]

Dammit I'm still in Aberdeen so I can't go to the march. There was a protest here last week which I didn't know about until it was too late to go. On reflection I was actually quite glad as pro-war members of the National Front apparently turned up and made trouble.

mp3 players...

[kingginger.livejournal.com]

... up to you and the capacity at which you use for storing Mp3's.

Would you / did you use the 6Gig that the old Archos had?
And could you use it to store files other than Mp3's as a mobile file transfer system aswell??

If you did - then I'd upgrade the Archos IMHO.

If you didn't, then I'd probably stick with Cd's - although 40Gigs of Mp3's is a lot of Cd's worth.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

I'd upgrade the Archos, mp3 CDs are far too much hassle IMHO - you'll just end up with CDRs coming out of your ears!

And I think I've got one of those Torx screwdrivers that you need for the side screws on an Archos knocking around, which you're welcome to use - I've been meaning to upgrade mine for a while now, as I find 6 Gig is too restrictive...

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

LAME-wise, I use CDex under Windows. It's fast, free (in all the ways) and links to FreeDB.

http://www.cdex.n3.net/

I'm currently using 1.5b10 with very few problems.

[ex-meta.livejournal.com]

EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) is the best ripping program. In fact, it's the only one I've found that's any good.