I would liken Archos to the auto industry and a sleazy car salesman. They’re only doomed to fail by running a business, that makes the end user, understand the complexities of codecs. That’s why apple sells a ton of ipods. They understand that making it as simple and intuitive as possible the more units your going to sell. It doesn’t matter that you’re A+ certified or you just learned how to create an e-mail account, apples products just work.

And Archos is notorious for having bad customer service. All these companies are in a service industry..if you can’t provide the other half of hardware electronics “customer service” then why would I want to buy a product from you.

You can't put a netbook in your pocket, you get less video battery time with a netbook, you mostly get less storage on a netbook (Archos is up to 250GB and 320GB, soon up to 500GB), ou cannot record TV like with a Tivo on a netbook, you cannot output to a HDTV using HDMI with a netbook, you don't have TV output on a netbook, again did I mention that you cannot put a netbook in your pocket? It's not the same product category and again, Archos provides plenty of features that netbooks and other Intel products do not have. I nearly never take my laptop with me (only when I plan to do some specific work with it some place), but I take my Archos 5 with me in my pocket every single day no matter where I am going for what and I use my Archos in public transportation catching up on video podcasts and recorded TV shows every single day. I would never do that using a laptop nor a netbook.

You can always knock $100 off Archos MSRP prices by buying Archos devices at the cheapest online resellers. So if the MSRP for the Archos 5 is $349, you can already now easilly find it at the cheapest online resellers at below $300 towards $250.

Apple never has done anything close to having the features of an Archos, so you can be certain that the rumored ipod touch 9" is going to be nothing much more than some fashion crap, just as with every other Apple product ever made.

I would disagree with you, however, about the Archos 5 fitting easily in the same pocket as the iPod Touch. It is significantly thicker. i routinely drop my Touch into a shirt pocket or pants pocket and could never have done that with the Archos 5.

As for the codecs, I think Archos made a mistake here. Most people do not think about what format their videos are in and do not understand a lot of the differences. I think the more which are included natively the better it is for teh device and the user.

All of that being said, the Archos 7 really is a beautiful player. We'll see if the much rumored iPod 9" Touch comes out this year and, if so, how that will affect this one. But for now, it really is a great video player.

Doug

The Archos 5 has a screen that is twice the size of the ipod touch. Yup it means you can fit 2 ipod touch screens within the Archos 5 4.8" screen, and still it fits in about the same sized pockets.

Archos thinks Mp3, Wav, Wma, Ogg, Flac are default audio codecs included for free and that AAC and AC3 are extra and don't need to be included for everyone. Archos also uses Mpeg4 (DivX, XviD), WMV as the default included codecs while Mpeg2 and H264 are optional codecs. On the Internet, most of the video you will find is DivX and most of the music is Mp3.

Doug

Check http://forum.archosfans.com for more information about the supported codecs.

Perhaps you didn’t purchase the H264 with AAC podcast plugin for $19 to the Archos which would be required to add those codecs. Or $30 for the 3 plugin pack, that is also to add the HD 720p resolution plugin and the Mpeg2 and AC3 plugin. Or perhaps you are trying to copy over a copy-protected iTunes video file or something. Apple makes sure that their copy-protected iTunes stuff only works on Apple products. For playing iTunes copy protected stuff you will have to hack iTunes and crack their copy protection.