New highend mp3 player recommendation

[Marvin the Martian]

I even removed Rockbox from my Mini today just to see how this newest iTunes was to deal with....had no troubles setting it up and reloading the player in regular iPod mode. Easy as pie.

[markmp3guy]

i'm also a linux guy and i won't buy anything ipod related or zune related. I do have wine installed so I can install some windows apps but i don't want to deal with the hassle. My next player will be a sony or something else great that comes out in the near future.

[BruceBanner]

I own an ipad2 and jail broke it purely to get around itunes and so that it would show up on 'My Network Places' (on my windows pc) and I could just drag 'n drop files across onto the ipad without even needing to connect it via usb cable.
Sadly it doesn't quite work right, some media like comics can be dumped pretty much anywhere and using ifile and a comic reader u can go find where u dumped yer comics and go read, much less painless than using itunes sync s**t.
But music is another matter, even jailbroken -yes u can bypass itunes- but its a headache, ive only done it a couple of times but found it a bit of a hassel. You certainly still need to connect it to pc via its cable, no wifi drag n drop available (like u can with comics). It was ugly enough that it detered me to not use the ipad2 as an mp3 player at all. Now if i had my heart set on a itouch or something, perhaps after regular use i would recall the necessary steps and it becomes less painful (certainly better than itunes).

I use my pc as a HTPC, its bad enuff i have foobar2000, winamp and media player classic all fighting for file associations, so I sympathize with those that like me don't want to add itunes to the mix (and let its evil apple fingers get into my registry).
I hate the apple 'locked down - force sync itunes thing' that after the ipad2 it was enough to deter me from using apple ever again (even jailbreaking wasn't enough, simpler to just go android).
I guess i have always found another device at a cheaper price point with drag n drop capabilities to not have to be forced to go across to apples way.