In the Market for a New MP3 Player

So my venerable Sony Walkman Mp3 player is on its' last legs.  The fact that it's been on its' last legs for the past three years is neither here nor there...

The fact is I'm worried that it's going to give up in the middle of a file run (carrying files from home to school or vice-versa) and drop me in a pile of the sticky stuff.  The obvious question is 'why don't you just use a pendrive?'  This question can only be answered by looking at my current PC setup.  I've an SD card in the back of my laptop running a flavour of Ubuntu, a pendrive that's essentially keeping all the files not critical for booting the operating system, and a few other pendrives that are burned out or full - lying around the place.  I go through portable storage like meals.

At least, I do when the device is primarily used for storage.

For some reason my MP3 players have always been a reliable way to carry files; at times the fringe benefit has been playing music, rather than the other way around.

There are tons of options on the market, and going through them all would be impossible, so I won't even try.

My criteria for the player are extensive, but could be (somewhat) boiled down to capacity, flexibility, (the range of file formats it supports) and modability.

Since I've been using linux I've found myself modifying things a lot more.  My PS3 and Xbox can run video and music from a media server.  In most cases this means 'Windows Media Centre.'  If you buy a fresh network storage device (like a mybookworld) you can often modify it to run as a media server.  This is possible because they all run some version of linux natively.  You just crack it open (metaphorically) and change the program it runs.

Alas, I couldn't change my own NAS because it would mean wiping the whole thing and starting again (which I'm not prepared to do), but after installing a media server on my baby laptop (just to see if it could be done) I think I'm ready to do something more ambitious.

Being able to play all my media files without converting them would be a boon, and I think it would only be viable with a hacked player.  Which players natively support .ogg for example?

So the challenge has been set, internet.  Go find me a huge, highly modable solid quality Personal/portable Media Player for a decent price.



On an unrelated note: the weather is insane here.  Yesterday I was wearing a t-shirt under my school shirt.  It wasn't particularly cold, warm enough to stay outside at least.

Tomorrow I will be wearing my skiing jacket, and it will be zipped up.

Fastest changing weather in the world?  I think so.