No Carrier's Comments

Rio Karma -My New Toy

Its getting closer to my yearly trek to Prague. This year like last I felt like buying something fun for the trip. Last year It was my Panasonic digital camera. Which by the way I still love, with its 12x Zoom and Leica Lens's .
This year I thought what could go better with my new headphones than a new MP3 , portable music player. But what model.
A few brands seem to dominate the market
Apple (ipod)
Sony
Creative Labs
I-River
Digital Networks (Rio)
Samsung

I had been using my Ipaq with a 512 meg sd ram card for music. While it did work good, there are something thing inherently wrong with using a Pocket PC as a music player.
Batter Life, Size of Storage, Lack of eq
The IPAQ is a good device, But as a High Quality MP3 or OGG player.. Its not. Happens to play wmv files and Mp3 files,but the device is more used a general purpose handheld computer, than an actual music player.
My Last music player with the Sony MiniDisk NZ10. It worked ok, but it took time to convert the files to Atrac Format and then each MD holds only about 5 CD's . Sony's desktop application counted the number of times you recorded a track, to make sure you were not making too many copies. (forget sony)
Apple.. If I wanted to follow the crowd.. Then I would consider them.... But na.. Couldn't see myself doing that.
That left
Creative Labs - IRiver and Digital Networks (Rio)
For me the mix of features and price made the decision for me. The Rio Karma.
Now that its here.. I love it. The sound quality, the size of disk, the ease of use. The thing has network card so in my home network I can put files on it, without the need to use a usb cable.

One thing I also love is the little red eraser head. Reminds me of my thinkpad.

Bob

posted by Bob Lee @ 7:22 PM