Having owned an iPod mini 4gb I was very surprised to read about the Archos Gmini XS 202s. I bought it and it wiped the floor with the iPod in just about every department (sound, battery life, memory). Amazing value for money. I only wished it charged whilst connected to the USB rather than just on the mains.

I think the Archos Gmini XS 202sr is excellent with one irritating bad point.

It has a huge memory. It can be plugged directly into the computer's USB port and files can be transferred to it directly from Windows Explorer. I generally rip songs directly from CDs onto the Gmini without the need to store them on the computer.
I like the way you can search for files in several ways including browsing the folders just as you might in Windows. I haven't, so far, made much use of playlists but this seems easy to do as well by highlightng the files you want and clicking on them.
One word of warning: Archos recommend using Windows Media Player to synchronise tracks and copy them to the player. However this only works if you have enough space on your computer's hard drive and want to keep an exact duplicate of those tracks on the player. In any event I found it a lot simpler just to copy tracks directly (I use Easy CD Creator but there are plenty of other programs). OK this does mean you don't have a backup but the files are still on the CDs.

The bad point is that it will freeze up at times. This doesn't happen during normal playback but is liable to happen at any other time. It is easy to 'unfreeze' it by holding down the left button for 15 seconds but it is annoying.

Overall I would recommend it.

I had an iPod mini 6Gb, and I got this Archos Gmini XS 202s for the same price!

The iPod restricted me to itunes software, the battery life wasn't what was advertised (too short), and I couldnt manage my music how I wanted or copy/move songs from the iPod. or edit songs on the iPod without the iTunes software.

The Archos is everything I need and address's all these points whilst giving me better battery life and a better price!