I agree with plonter on the importance of organizing and tagging your music. It might be a lot more time consuming than just drag & drop, but a good way of accessing your music (as long as you get used to it).
I am very systematic and I always rip CD:s to wav with EAC, then I use CDex to convert to LAME mp3. Then I use mp3gain to adjust the gain level to around 90-91db (to avoid clipping). I fix the size of the album art myself (usually 272x272, the size my S9 uses and the pictures are always smaller than 31kb - works 100% with all my DAP:s that can display artwork). Finally I use Media monkey or mp3-tag to fix the ID3 tags and add album art in the tags. It is a lot of work, but it is rewarding when I do not get "unknown artist" or something like that. If I get an error it is more likely due to an error during transfer or not very good firmware and database update (Sansa View).
Even if some of my DAP:s can use MSC (or whatever it is called), I still use MTP since it works well when the music is well organized.
If you are prepared to look to older mp3 players there are alternatives that can do folder browsing. Older iRiver HDD players can do that and you can put bigger hard drives in them. However, do you want to go around with a DAP from 2004/2005 in 2010?
(I want, but I like the design of old DAP:s and how easy it is to modify them yourself).
