Hey thanks for the reply.

As a matter of fact I do own a Nitrus for about 2 weeks so far. This is a great product in my opinion, the first hard drive based player I've owned (I've had MP3 CD players in the past). My only issue is the Li-lon battery technology which seems to be inconsistent (or at least the player, I suppose it still needs break in time, with a few full charge/discharge cycles as stated by the manufacturer). I never get the 16 hour claim, but I after reading several messages on another messageboard, the things I do with it really kill the battery life (backlit, changing songs frequently, high volume levels, etc.). I think the shuffle mode adds stress to the battery as well as it has to spin the drive at every song to different locations, instead of accessing the files sequentially in non-shuffle mode (just a theory). To see if my player's battery was at fault I'm doing a test using IDEAL conditions (cool place, 15 volume, no backlit, no shuffle, 128 kbps mp3). It's playing a 20 hour mp3 file, and the battery is at half at 10 hours into it, so I guess the battery is fine.

I was really considering the Carbon, as the Seagate drive is really good. It's too bad it doesn't have a Line Input I was really looking for in a player. If it only had that feature, I would definately get one.

On the bright side, if my player decides to die before my two-year warranty expires (and the Nitrus players are no longer available), I'll probably get upgraded to the Carbon at the time it will probably be the same price I paid for the Nitrus =]

Everything else about this player is amazing and has caused me zero problems.