A new company based in California, Entempo LLC (entempo.com), recently introduced a low-cost player called the Spirit. Despite it's rather generic-looking design, it offers quite a bit for the price - $ 199 MSRP. It even comes with a 2-year limited warranty.



Specs & Hardware:
• 20gb hard drive (probably a 2.5-incher)
• FM tuner & radio recording
• USB 2.0, Mass Storage Class
• 164 x 104 backlit LCD
• 8mb SDRAM buffer
• 3.5mm headphone output
• Built-in lithium battery provides 10-12 hours of play time
• Dedicated volume controls, lock switch, and recording buttons, and playback buttons.
• Navigation control is a scroll-switch located on the right side, similiar to Creative's Nomad Zen
• ShoX drive protection system "providing more than 5 times the protection of a regular hard drive"
• Voice recording with built in mic

Features:
• MP3, WMA, and WAV support
• Load music through Explorer (drag n drop) or Windows Media Player. No software is required.
• Content organization by Artist, Album, Track, Genre, Playlist, Recordings
• Player will index iD3 track information on it's own after being disconnected from the PC
• Supports on-the-fly playlisting
• Supports English, German, French, Spanish, & Italian languages
• 5-band custom EQ and EQ presets

Included Accessories:
• Earbuds with microphone for one-button recording
• Includes a carrying case
• The usual CDs, manuals, cables, etc

It's not clear what the ShoX protection system is, as I couldn't find any details about other than it's something new and patented. Could simply be marketing-speak for a rubber sleeve, who knows. Considering the price, I'm assuming it uses a standard 2.5-inch hard drive, so it might be user-upgradable. And the self-databasing feature is impressive considering only a handful of companies have pulled this off so far - Rio, RCA, and Archos.

More details in the product manual, HERE (Right click, save as..)

According to the press release at BusinessWire.com, "Entempo will also introduce higher capacity models soon.."

We found this one on sale at Surplus Computers (softwareandstuff.com) for only $ 140. However, we can't vouch for this vendor as they don't even appear on resellerratings.com. But if anyone decides to get one of these, we'd like to hear more about it.