Glog

Don't Hate me because I'm Brown

So I took the plunge yesterday and bought a MP3 player - the 5GB Rio Carbon. After tax, it was $237. I know iPods are the best, or so they say, but I detest iTunes.

Cool Stuff:

It's freakin small, which is a big reason I bought it. It's thinner and smaller (LxW) than the iPod mini. This thing will not bulge out in your pocket and I can fit the whole thing in my fist.

Also the battery life is good, at 20 hours. The sounds is good, although the default ear phones suck. The Rio Music Manager for desktop synchronization is adequate if not a bit klunky to use. The UI of the Rio of course is not as smooth as the iPod and their menu wheel, but I find it more than easy to use. It's easy to make use of playlists and bookmarking for audio books (or whatever). It has a built in voice recorder too but I don't care for that.

Bad Shit:

I can't skip to songs in a given playlist. At least I haven't figured out how. It looks like I have to play songs in order, or use random shuffle to get to another song.

It takes too long to boot up, and the Rio Music Manager on the PC also is slow to start up.

No Audio output - that sucks.

No Audio input - that sucks too.

I can't tell if it is charging when I hook it up to the PC. Maybe it is. If I plug it into a wall, I see that it's charging from the flashing battery sign on the screen. I have to read the manual to see what's up.

Also, I can't seem to play music on it when it's plugged into the PC. I'll have to check if the same is true when plugging it into the wall.

Posted by G at December 2, 2004 10:13 AM | TrackBack