The Odyssee of Technics or How to get an portable player for your needs

Hey everyone!

It's been quite a while since I wrote a blogpost.

Like 2 weeks ago, I found my some day missing MP3 player again. It had an adventurous bath in our washing machine, probably making it pretty clean, but also pretty useless.

This disastrous events led myself onto an odyssee of Greek dimension. I want(ed) to find some kind of device, which apart from playing music can do some things, made possible by the newest developments on the technical market. This includes:

• Using Anki (An Spaced-Repetition-Software i use very often)
• Playing Videos (Maybe without big conversion issues, and with more than 1,5'' display)
• Playing some nice games (Especially retro gaming on it would be fun)

Referring to the Anki-Website, there are some versions for mobile devices: Of course the iPod and stuff, Android driven devices, Zaurus (I doubt there are still any devices of with this OS on the market anyways) and astonishingly the Nintendo DS.

I found this Archos 28 for 70 € at Amazon, and decided to buy it. After some inconveniences with the sending (the Hermes Cooperation does some bad service -.-) I received a player which is not able to boot properly. In 3 days of trying I was not able to revive it and I will probably send it back on Monday.

So I am at the same point again.
What device should I buy??

The iPod is extremely expensive: Paying over 200 bucks for something that started as simple portable player is massive! And it seems that you get nagged around by Apple all the time. In general I am suspicious towards Apple in general. I despise their attitude: It's Apple and only Apple. Everything we don't have you don't need.
Apart from that it may be (even though I heard different things too) a decent player which runs without problems (that was my old player too, but of course it had not all the nice features I would like to have). Also it should have a huge variety of stuff to run on it.

The Android players: I found only one deployer non-phones working with Android so far: Archos. Those players are pretty cheap, but I heard of much trouble with it (and I have an player with strange-non-working behaviour right next to me), so I am pretty unsure about these.

The Nintendo DS: Another device for unsureness. First problems: it does not even feature compability with MP3-data. You have to convert your music files always before you can use them. Also you need to buy an "module" for doing anything more advanced with it. And then your dealing with the homebrew community (so the least active from iPod to NDS) Also I would have to decide whether I want a DSi or a DSlite, the first one having native usage of music, but if I want to enter the homebrew market anyway, there are solutions for that issues for the DSlite too, and that boy can still use GBA cartridges. (man, I love retro gaming)

Oh god, I don't know what to do...