My friend has an archos, I would say for mp3 they suck, but for videos they're great, the internet is also worse on the archos, my friend has the archos 705wifi so I have an honest view of both of them. overall I would say the ipod touch beats it hands down.
Borg, you cannot just use them as usb sticks, itunes needs to be installed and without it all you can do is transfer files like photos off of the ipod. There is an application where you can transfer files between the device and your computer by the network, and can access most files like word files and excel on the ipod which is great, but this requires you to access the network and know the ip address and stuff.