If you compare the specifications of the Archos 5 and Archos 7 portable media players to competing products, you'll find that they hit the ball out of the park when it comes to features, but one downside to those handhelds has always been an e-mail application that hasn't quite worked right. They went to stores with a beta version of the program, meaning it was still in testing and prone to crashing. Archos believes it's fixed that problem in its latest firmware update, which has just become available. Better late than never!

Download and install the update on your machine, and you'll get a version of the e-mail app that's no longer in testing; in theory, it shouldn't crash quite so often anymore. Some other minor tweaks were made for the update, but that's the big story here. Both Google and Yahoo! mail are supported by the program, and you can configure it to use some other servers too with a little know-how. So you should be happy if you dropped 450 or more bucks on one of these hardcore media players, 'cause now you'll finally get all that you paid for — that's what Archos is hoping, anyway!

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