On the low end I like the Sandisk Sansa. You can get a 2 gig for less than $100 and I'm pretty sure that you can drag and drop although I think you might have to use the Audible software because of the DRM licenses that have to be downloaded.

On the high end what about a ZUNE. I know they don't have the following of the IPODS but they are nice. My daughter got one for christmas and loves it.

See the link below for all supported devices to give you more ideas.

Hope this helps,
George
Source(s):
http://www.audible.com/adbl/store/deviceCenter/devices.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=Y...

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I recently bought the Sandisk Sansa e200 v2. I had pretty much the same criteria for buying as you. I had a gigabeat and a bunch of el cheapo mp3 players before that. The cheapys stopped working pretty quickly and it was annoying having only a small capacity flash memory. On the gigabeat the hard drive died after a few years. The sansa has been good so far, here are the pros and cons of it as I see them.

Pros:
- Similar capacity and functions as the iPod Nano but about half the price
- Small and sturdily built. It feels very solid
- When the headphones are clicked in they are held very tightly, I've dropped it twice while jogging but been able to stop it from hitting the ground by grabbing the headphone cord *phew*
- 8GB flash memory: enough for plenty of songs (~1200), less prone to failure than a hard drive
- If you turn it off and back on it remembers how far into the current song/audiobook you were
- Fast forwards quickly and has a function "scan through song" which is helpful for mp3s like audiobooks that are really long
- Long battery life
- One-click voice recording

Cons:
- If you transfer music files to it via windows explorer it won't read the album art from the ID3 tags, not sure what happens if you use WMP.
- Charge via USB only (actually a pro for me, I always have a compy I can charge it on, I don't want another attachment for charge via power point)
- It's a bit hard to click the buttons, the raised scroll wheel gets in the way. You get used to it.
- No browse via file structure, only via ID3 tags. Will be annoying if your music isn't well tagged.
- You can make playlists for it via WMP but if you want to create a new playlist while not connected to the computer you can only use the one built-in playlist. You add tracks to the built-in playlist by adding the currently playing song, that's the only way to do it.
- Very glossy, gets covered in fingerprints.

It has two modes for transferring files to it, one for WMP and one for drag & drop from windows explorer which works for non-DRM files. From reading the Audible.com website it looks like all audible.com files are DRM protected and require the audible software to be installed. I think any compatible player will allow you to use WMP to transfer Audible.com files to the player.

This review site gives a good look at it:
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/03/sandisk-sansa-e200-series-review.php
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