So, my sony walkman broke a bit ago. It wsa very nice as it supported USB MSD and MTP protocols and worked perfectly with linux. Right now, it is in a crash loop, probably something bad happened to the chip or the OS.

So, my question: What is everyone using for a media player? Sorry, the answer "my graphing calculator" is.... o_O no.

I am not looking for anything Apple. I looked at Creative a while back. I am also looking at dev boards (so long that I can put a touchscreen on it and it has a headphone jack, I am good) just because I can repurpose it .

A custom-built solution isn't going to be cost-effective or robust. I'd drop that option.

Some of the options noted in my old media player selection thread may be of interest, but beyond that I don't really have a specific suggestion. I'd say anything from Cowon is good, but probably costs more than you're willing to spend.

I use my Archos 32 for my musical needs, but it has a rather low battery life, but it still works great in terms of music.

Go get an mp3 player at your local electronics store. You can get one for under $25-30 with 4GB.

I can't just get any-old one. Maybe I should say what criteria I have:

• Must support MSD protocol
  
• Shouldn't require specially formatted videos. I have had enough with using ffmpeg on every video.
  
• OGG/FLAC support
  
• Either over 16GB or be expandable
  
• Battery life - Doesn't die in a few hours
  
• Not really for videos, I have a tablet for that
  
• Internal speaker, possibly...

I haven't had much time to look around, I will do that later today.

@Tari: Ty for that topic, I will investigate the players mentioned there later on.

Those requirements help the recommendation process a lot.

I know the J3 (the one I ended up getting) supports all of that as well as coming in 16 or 32GB flavors and being expandable. The battery is excellent- I regularly get a full week's worth (40 hours) of listening out of it.