Considering the price difference you should expect as much. That player wasn't even $50.00 cash w/tax.
I took it home and loaded any mp3 file I had and some that I didn't, and did it without using Itunes or some of the other mentioned music services.
I’m interested in mp3 portability myself, simply wanting to listen to music already on my puter. But the proprietary crap turns me off.
So you say all you have to do with yours is drag and drop, no hassle with a nanny software reporting every move to an online entity? No big learning curve?
I used to actually support artists and buy CDs. With each “improvement” in DRM technology, the more difficulty trying to make them play on my tabletop stereos. F’em. They can keep their useless CDs.