I've organized my music by Genre\Sub-Genre\Artist\_Co-artist (if any)\Year_Album\TrackNo_Title. All directories also have relevant jpg's and text files besides the music. The usual listening method is to keep a file called All.m3u loaded in Winamp at all times. This all inclusive list is sorted by path & filename. I use a remote to shuffle till I hit something I'm in the mood for and then toggle to straight play. The jump function in Winamp works great. I can go to any artist, year, album or song in a split second even if I can't recall the exact name. Google Desktop searches are also lightning quick. Instead of using All.m3u, I can also go into any branch of the tree through windows explorer at any level and randomize from there.

Obviously one wants to be able to take one's habits everywhere. The problem is that popularity of iPOD's seems to have killed the development of 3.5" size HD based players. There seems to be no Empeg, Dension, Neo or Phatnoise large capacity player available anymore and my DMP3 died from amateur attempts at soldering a broken line-out jack!! I can't accept the limits of a 2.5" drive (I want to be able to change the drive as I please) or any storage format other than simply copying my directory tree as it is into a device visible simply as storage. I don't want to install any software unless its better than what I already use (EAC, Lame, Tag & Rename). Didn't go to OGG because of my DMP3 player but would like to.

Sorry for the long intro,
Here is the real question:
Which semi-portable player can give me
1. Good quality line out signal
2. Recognize an internal/external 3.5" hard drive that can be easily changed. Load very very long playlists without crashing its brain or play contents of a folder including sub-folders randomly without biasing to a sub-folder with 2 files versus one with 200. And then allow a switch to non-shuffle mode from the currently playing song.
3. Display tags
4. Buttons & mounting compatible with safe driving
5. Ability to take it out of the car and run on DC power.
6. Compatibility - VBR's made with LAME are absolutely necessary. OGG would be great. A wide variety would be nice but I can live without it.

My options seem to be:
1. Find a used DMP3 or other 3.5" player somewhere (Slim chances and no support/warranty)
2. Find a portable which reads attached storage drives of any size and does not twist my arm too much in how I keep my media. Maybe something like Creative Zen Vision/Archos Gmini 402 can do it. These are DivX players (which doesn't hurt). They are also rechargeables (which I don't trust much) My preference is external DC power. This is the option where I hope somebody might have succeded with something easier than say here http://www.command-tab.com/index.php/ipod-super

3. Use the lightest laptop I can afford with an external drive, a remote and upgrade the sound. Seems to be an awful choice really - Booting time, heat, Microsoft woes, a pain to remove and reattach.

I just joined this forum because I don't know where else to go with my pain. Please tell me if you do. In the meanwhile I've gone back to using cassette tapes from my past. Its a lot of fun really.