My iAudio X5 player now runs Rockbox.

Installation was fantastic. Just copying some files via mass-storage.

I found navigation in rockbox hard to get used to (took me ages to find the full settings menu, the way I've found is like this: while playing, press the joystick a second, then press the record button.), but the info screen is very nice:

There are different themes for the playback UI, which include information on the next song to be played. Very nice. I'm looking forward to UIs that make use of the color screen.

Rockbox offers tons of features not available in the original firmware. Rockbox is said to have gapless playback, I prefer its crossfading. Replaygain is also available.

But even if some of that is not yet working: use the source, Luke!

I can't comment on the battery life yet, haven't used it on battery yet. This will obviously be a key factor; but the player has a battery life of up to 15 hours, so I used to recharge it only every other week. ;-)

I bought my MP3 player in the US, so it obviously came with an US charger. Figures I didn't think of buying an adapter there, and somehow I couldn't find a cheap adapter here yet.

The charger doesn't say it can do 230 V, but according to the manufacturer it does. And someone has opened one, the chips can.

We have some standard adapters here, but they don't fit. You can plug in some US devices, but not this one: the charger's plug (crappy US electrocute-yourself "standard"...) is just two metal stripes coming out of it.

The adapter's socket however is inset about 1 cm (which is reasonable for safety purposes, and common, if not required in Europe), and the charger obviously is too wide to fit into the adapter...

The workaround I've found is funny: I still have an adapter I bought to plug European devices into US sockets. This cheap adapter ($1 or so) can also take US plugs. If I put it inbetween I can make up for the inset.

So it's US-Device goes into a tiny most-to-US adapter, which goes into most-to-European adapter.

Wikimedia Commons on power plugs and sockets, including the sane german/french models (aka CEE 7/7 "Schuko" plug, CEE 7/17 Europlug)