Hi I cant comment direct on the 8860 ( looks great eh ) So the following is based on the 8390 ( effectively the same as 8360)
The unit is not as fast as an ipod , probably due to the hdd vs flash thing, but what you lose you certainly make up for 100 fold in capacity . Mine has a 250 gig hard drive.
from boot up it takes 15 seconds to play the first song. as far as switching between song in a playlist it is super fast , the only delay is when the hdd is sleeping and you want to exit the playlist and choose a new selection, in that case it takes about 10 seconds.
file structure doesn't matter it reads id3 tags so you can set it up any way you want , personally I let media monkey sync it all for me.
My wife has ipod touch and ultimately I prefer the vosonic , for capacity , functionality and it's ability to read a bunch of raw file
camera data , cards and divx support . So while it has it's shortcomings it is a fantastic unit .
If you have any other questions, I'm happy to help out.
I currently have a DMC Xclef 500 and am looking to upgrade to a PMP. I know that I need a hefty amount of storage because I have a lot of music right now (over 100gb) and I would like to utilize the photo and video features. That being said, I am stuck between the Archos 705 and the Vosonic 8860 that comes out in May. My problem is, there is a lot of information and user comments about the Archos, but not a lot about the old Vosonic/the Wolverine ESP. So, I have a couple of questions to ask before I make my choice.
On my DMC Xclef 500, I have a pretty long startup period before I can actually listen to my music. My Brother's Ipod starts up immediately. How fast does the Vosonic, Wolverine, or Archos seem to load for you guys? Is it fast or does it take awhile to get going?
On my DMC Xclef 500, if I want to skip a couple of songs, I have to wait a couple seconds between each song before I can go to the next one. Example: Lets say I have 10 songs in the folder and I am almost done listening to song 1 and I want to go to song 5. If I were to press fast forward to go to the next song, it takes about 2 seconds to load up the next song. I hate that it has this lag because I really only want to load that 5th song, not every song in between. With the Ipod, you just press the fast forward button until you get to your song with no lag. So, is there a lag like this between songs on the Vosonic, Wolverine, or Archos? If so, how bad is it?
Lastly, I noticed that all of these were drag and drop mp3 players. I am used to this with my DMC Xclef 500. I currently have my music seperated in folders as follows: Artist/Album Title/Track Number - Song Title. While this formatting work on the Vosonic, Wolverine, or Archos? Or, do I have a specific folder or number of folders I can put it in?
Thank you for answering my questions. I know it took a lot of time to go through and read all of these and I really appreciate your help. Also, if you know of any better PMP with a high capacity please let me know about it. I am always interested in getting the best thing for me.

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