[schrototo]

Actually, what you describe doesn't make the Archos brilliant, rather it seems to me as if it is so simple, that the burden of organization shifts to the user. Which of course worked out great in your case, and would probably for most people here, but, in my mind, a really good device would take care of organization all by itself, in a way that just works.

I too would love to see the iPod improve in areas other than "just" organizing contemporary music. (Besides classical music, audiobook support for example is almost ridiculously bad, and even podcast support is lacking in major ways.)

[omaranto]

I don't have an Archos (and actually have never seen one) so I don't know but it's possible it doesn't force you to organize your music yourself: the post you replied to says one option was to dump a directory hierarchy.

[tzs]

Right. They also bundled player software for the PC that would organize things for you by metadata, and generate playlists to sync to the player that reflected that organization.

You didn't have to organize your music into directories and manage it yourself unless you wanted to.