I really like my Archos, but the batteries only last about 3 hours

I'm not sure what you're doing with your player, but you should get much better life than that. Of course, I have the recorder so it may be a newer model with improvements in that area, but my batteries last quite a long time. I've recorded 2 hour long concerts and listened to 4 hours of music without my batteries running out. I seem to remember reading that the Archos players were supposed to have a battery life of 10 hours of listening.

I'm not totally endorsing the Archos, however. I like it just fine. I wanted an MP3 player that could record. That only left one option. However, the software for the player is pretty bad. The UI is just fine, but the player needs pros like the empeg team to design some good software.