My wife’s old Archos jukebox finally died and now she wants a real MP3 player. She bought me an older Zen Jukebox a few years back and kind of hinted she wanted Creative brand MP3. But you see, she gives presents that meet the minimum demands of what you need. I give presents that give you what you really want. So I got her the Zen Vision:M 60GB Black, with the docking station, all the cables, car charger, etc. JOBSPODS may be the Ferrari, but sometimes the Porshe does just fine. 
[QUOTE=Derleth]
What kinds of MP3 players need special software on the host computer, and which kinds can I just mount like a normal USB drive and dump music onto? I’m looking to get an MP3 player and I don’t want to get chained to any crappy software (and, yes, all special-purpose software is crappy) just to use it.
[/QUOTE]
I believe that most MP3 players other than iPods do not need special software. I could be wrong though. The one I have first hand experience with is:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00080QYRK/104-4936502-1157568
I know it doesn’t require special software, and holds around 500 songs. It’s small too.
[QUOTE=Derleth]
What kinds of MP3 players need special software on the host computer, and which kinds can I just mount like a normal USB drive and dump music onto? I’m looking to get an MP3 player and I don’t want to get chained to any crappy software (and, yes, all special-purpose software is crappy) just to use it.
[/QUOTE]
A LOT of them. I mean it. Read carefully the reviews on any you buy. I got my brother a Creative Zen Nano for his birthday, thinking you could just plug it in and transfer files, but you can’t…you can get it to work with Windows Media Player if you download (ready?) some special software.
I have a sandisk 256MB flash based player, and it does do drag and drop with no software. Just read reviews carefully and you should be fine.