$1000 is a little excessive, even for an Apple iPod - I just checked the US Apple Store site and the most expensive option (iPod photo 60GB) comes in at $449 - the 20GB standard iPod is "only" $299. However, that's still not cheap, but it's also not $1000. Unless you want it made of platinum with a diamond screen or something (in which case it'd come in rather more expensive than a measly thousand bucks).

But seriously, back to your question, if you would rather go for a Creative/Rio model than either an Apple/Archos offering, then do that. The sound-quality isn't going to be that much different, and any MP3 "jukebox" machine worth its salt will be able to play tracks randomly.

When you say "a bunch of albums" for Transatlantic trips, do you mean 10, or 100, or 500? Because if you only want to carry a few at any one time then you might also consider a larger size (e.g. 1-2GB) flash-based music player. But then of course you'd have the hassle of deciding what albums/tracks you want to take on a trip, and then transferring them from your computer, whereas with a hard-drive-based device you just need to plug it in, have all your albums ripped on your PC, and it synchronises so that it's all there for you to choose what you want to listen to on the go.

I'd recommend that you browse around the ZDNet guide to buying MP3 players at http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/Music/2...ml?tag=ont-mp3 - there they outline all the things you might want to consider, as well as review the principal contenders for your money.

Hope that helps!
Richard