Bought a rio carbon for the missus last July. She hasn't had a problem with it, other than the daft issue with certain headphones shorting on the metal of the unit. It's also quite robust, she took it round the world and it's still in one piece. You can copy music across to it in Windows Explorer without having to bother with software like win media player. Personally, I'd recommend one. The only downside is that the player isn't as intuitive to use as the iPod (i.e navigating tracks, albums, playlists etc).