Need recommendation for a portable (walkman) CD player that plays MP3 CDs

It needs to have these features.
- No skip (it will be used on very long runs, in a backpack).  I had a
player a while back that never skipped on my runs, but it had other
problems so I sent it back)
- External wired remote (with FF, rewind, & volume)
- Approx (or under) $100
- Display shows ID3 or iD4 tags
- Ability to FF or rewind within a song (in mp3 mode).
- Some kind of return policy if I don?t like it.

I am in a big hurry to buy one, so any links/recommendations/reviews
would be helpful.

thanx in advance,

I would definitely suggest getting a flash drive/mp3 player-- it is
super small, you can store all your computer files on it, and it plays
mp3s. I have a nice one that costed less than $100 and held 256 MB of
info and recorded voice, but the company no longer exists. Here is
something similar:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=51075&item=5108816148&rd=1

(You may have to cut and paste the link)

If that's not what you want though, I'd recommend anything from a
major retailer, like walmart, because I also have a mp3/CD player
which broke 4 times, and I had to take it back 4 times. Having bought
it at a place like walmart made the exchanges easy.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/search-ng.gsp?dept=3944&search_query=mp3+cd&search_redirect=true&search_constraint=3944%253A3983&CATEGORY_ID=3983&cat=3983

Reading your specifications, I believe I have found the perfect MP3 CD
Player for you. The reason for my picking this player is that it
features a 13 line dot matrix display which I believe will come in
quite handy for your ID3 Tags Viewing. The battery life is well over
95 hours MP3 or Atrac3 and 55 hours for a regular audio CD. It weighs
about 2 pounds, allows you to fit 490 songs per CD (on average), and
comes with its own SoundStage Music Software to let you try Atrac 3
alongside your MP3. Now I don't personally recommend using SoundStage,
I've had many problems, I'd stick to the excellent Nero, or the
exceptional and free Itunes to burn my CD's, but that choice is up to
you. Now you said under $100. The link I gave you to Target has it
featured for $99.99, BUT I have a Coupon Code that ought to get you a
discount of 10% on checkout plus free shipping. This baby shouldn't
cost you anymore than 90 bucks Shipped. That Coupon Code is:
TCSAVEJULY22. Use it at checkout, and it should work fine.  The Sony
ATRAC3 Walkman MP3 CD Player - D-NE710 can be found by copying this
link found here:

http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/ref=br_1_1/602-0689721-4978241?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=B00008W7LK

Good Luck, hope you choose it. You won't regret it.

zachga-ga, looks great but i need a external wired remote and this
doesn't seem to have one.  my old $50 player had one.  Also, a flash
based unit won't work for me.

Does Sony make a unit like that, but with a external wired remote?

I personally own a IRiver imp-350 portable mp3cd player. It displays
ID3v1 tags (umm..ID4 tags don't exist that I know of). It has a built
in FM tuner and does have a nice back lit wired remote. The unit is
EXTREMELY thin and comes with special rechargable batteries...it will
take standard AA's with the included adapter. The unit itself has no
display, so you need the remote to see what the tags are. It also
supports WMA files, and will play WMAv9 provided it's not the lossless
or professional codecs. The audio quality is nice with preset EQ's and
the ability to speficy your own bass and treble settings, you can even
change the frequency that the bass and treble operate. The unit is a
little cumbersome to use at first, seeing as some actions require
double clicking. Battery life on mp3 discs with the rechargables is
very nice, while on audio CD's it leaves a little to be desired. It
doesn't support free format MP3 tho (files that are over 320 kbps).

I've not used the Sony ATRAC3 CD-walkman, I do know ATRAC3 is a nice
codec, but honestly, I'd rather listen to WMA9 two-pass @ 64 than
listen to some of the ATRAC3 stuff. I used to have a MD walkman that
had netMD...I traded it out for the imp-350, it's just that nice. 480
seconds of ESP for mp3, 980 for WMA and 90 seconds for audio CD
(selectable to 45). It's fully firmware upgradeable so new audio
formats may be added, the most recent upgrade I got featured new
display modes (features a waveform, analyzer, UV meter or progression
bar in the lower corner).

I've taken this unit biking and twice when I spent days in DC riding
metro and walking the city, never skipped once, I could cram it in a
pocket and never have to pull it out, except to change discs. This
isn't to say it's not fully without bugs....FM radio doesn't use EQ
and on some WMA discs, if you stop it, and hit play again, it'll give
you a NO DISC error, but seeing as I've only gotten it to do it once,
I haven't been able to send a report of exactly what's happening to
iRiver.

<a href="http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/cd.aspx">IRiver's US CD
page</a> has a full listing of thier products. The SlimX 450 and 550
are also as thin as the 350. (350 and 450 are 16.7mm thick...the 550
is 13.7) but, they're a bit above your $99 price. I've also not used
them, but I'm sure they live up to the same claim I made about the
350.

Also, something I forgot to mention about the 350, just something I
thought was very cool. A while back I burned all four PResidents OF
The USA albums on to two CD's, since they fit. This unit supports
CD-Text. Since my program automatically set the artist, track, and
album tags, I could actually switch albums on the audio CD like I
could on an mp3 disc..and it even renumbered the files, so rather than
having like track 14 be track 1 on II...it actually was track 1. I
mean, that's probably not a huge issue, but, seriously, it shows how
well they programmed things, and how the put effort (even if it's only
a litte) into a feature that no one probably would even know about.

dewdude-ga, that is very interesting news.  One thing that it critical
to me is the ability to FF or rewind within a song (in mp3 mode).  
Many of my CDs have 2-3 audio books on them, each as a single track,
and if you had to start the book over each time, it would not be fun. 
Do they have this feature/.ability?

dewdude-ga, please post your comments as the answer. i ordered the
iRiver SlimX iMP-550 CD.  thanx.

sherpaj,

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thanks dewdude!