Full Review

This is my first player so no experience to make comparisons.

I like the player, dont like the earphones

set the E260 to msc mode and connect via usb to my pc running fedora core 6. Mounts automatically and creates a desktop icon called Sansa E260 open it with the nautilus file browser and you are ready to start moving files. I used lame to convert ripped wave files to 192kbps mp3 files and tag the files. I tried other bit rates (ie the default 128kbps) but the sansa didnt like it. Firmware update only on windows at this time, hopefully the rockbox firmware project will get out of beta. Since I specifically bought the unit as it works with linux, couldnt be happier. New firmware from rockbox will be an added plus (someday)

On my window box there were 3 surprises.
Firmware update software creates a connection to a sandisk server to download the latest firmware. I didnt care for it as it is always on trying to connect whenever the pc is on.

The rhapsody install cd doesnt contain rhapsody just another bit of network software that downloads the rhapsody software. I just about quit there but at that time I didnt know what bit rate to use for the mp3 files so I carried on.
After rhapsody downloads, another package starts to download and it appears to be win media player 10 drm components. This download kept failing repeatedly (I have dialup) until finally I had to shut down my zonealarm firewall software completely. Since I dont have win media player at all on my win xp box, this was a big shock. Being on dialup, I have no interest in downloading music and drm is a joke so the win software will be deleted.