Had my sony 20gb one for a year now, nothing wrong with it so far. Not that hard to read with scuffs, turn the brightness up Also, you using the sony shite or sonic stage to put songs on? I know you have 29GB of music, but seriosuly, theres no point having that on the player, it will just slow it down. I used to have 50gb of music, i only used about 12 gb of it on player...