portable digital music players

[Travis Roy]

> 1) MUST play both MP3 and OGG formats, since I have a substantial
>    amount of both, and no current physical access to my source
>    material in order to re-rip to one or the other...

Sorry to say but that is REALLY going to limit your choices. The only 
ones that I know of that play OGG are hard drive bases so that's going 
to usually mean big bucks.

> 2) Should be small and lightweight -- my main use will be to enhance
>    my jogging experiences

Se above about OGG support in portable digital music devices.

> 3) 128MB of RAM is ideal.  I can live with 64MB.  More than 128MB is
>    not necessary, and probably a waste of my money.
> 
> 4) Ideally, it should interface easily with Linux.  I have USB,
>    ieee1394, and smart-card interfaces available.  Unfortunately the
>    USB is only USB1, but the device should ideally do USB2 for when I
>    upgrade.
> 
> 5) Price and battery life are considerations.

I have a My Diva Player http://www.mydivaplayer.com/html/diva.html

I -love- it. I have an older one that only has 32megs on board, but it 
takes CF cards.

There's one on ebay for cheap:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11024&item=3090148583&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

Anyway, like I said it's great.. it's VERY small, easy to use. You just 
plug it in and mount it, looks line a normal hard drive. It has a voice 
recorder. Battery life is great, it's all solid state. It does have it's 
quirks..

When attaching it to a computer it's either the CF Memory or the 
internal memory, not both. So when you want to copy stuff to the 
internal memory you have to unplug it, remote the CF card and plug it 
back in. Since I only have the 32meg version I generally only use the CF 
card anyway, so that's not a big deal for me.

It came with a belt clip and I use mine a lot.

One of the things I used it for, and this might be of interest to some 
here was for listening to recorded radio shows. I have a script that 
records radio shows with my TV/FM card and saves them to MP3. Nothing 
music related, mostly Saturday shows on NPR like Car Talk, Wait Wait 
Don't Tell Me, things like that. They take up very little space since 
they are recorded with low bitrate settings. If anybody wants a copy of 
the script, let me know..

If you do find something that fits what you're looking for, and it plays 
OGGs please let the list know. From what I've seen they are very few and 
far between. At least for under $150 bucks.