I'm looking for a small portable and fairly indestructible mp3 player for my brother to use while skateboarding. I got a Creative Nomad Muvo as a company gift 2 years back and it fits the bill perfectly. I use it every time I go snowboarding. It doesn't look like they make them anymore. It doesn't need to have a ton of memory 128/256MB is enough, but the key is that it's lightweight, small and fairly crushproof. Is there anything like this around the $50 price tag that ya'll could recommend?

Like this?

Yeah, wow, did you use the price search engines? Pricegrabber is your friend! They even have several models available, including the one Ricin mentioned for $46, the 256MB version for about $82, and the 128MB FM model for $70.

So you like this unit? I was thinking of getting a flash player for my girlfriend for Christmas, but didn't see one that matched my requirements, which were pretty much the same as yours. It's too late now, but I might consider it for a birthday present.

I should have mentioned that I was sort of looking for recommendations on another unit. That Muvo does the bare minimum job but not having an interface sort of sucks, and it doesn't do random. I didn't use the price searches because i'm looking for it locally before xmas. Thanks for the tip though... I'll have to keep looking locally.. CompUSA and Best Buy didn't have any that interested me.

Ahh, I see. Yeah, then you're in the same position I was in. I agree that no display does indeed suck. And the only ones I saw in Best Buy and those places that were merely okay were those iRiver units. They're okay, but way too expensive if you get them locally. I think they were close to $1/MB, which is just too much.

But now that I see how little you can get them for online, units like this one look much more attractive.

Get a dead Carbon off ebay & stick in a SS CF card of whatever size you like. Nice interface, long battery life...cool too!

-Zeke