I really wasn't going to dissect this but I suppose I should. I just don't know why you're so *angry* considering you can send the thing back if it doesn't do what you want. I put a year of my life into it, so I may come over a bit defensive, but I don't think it sucks.

I suppose I have to point out that this is all my opinion and I am not representing Rio with this post.

Dimensions

Horses for courses. It is an alternative form factor to the iPod, and I'd point out that we're the only ones with the guts to have tried that so far. Everyone else has wrapped a metal box around a Toshiba drive and produced what I would describe as a clone. Those guys will never improve on the iPod dimensions because Apple have that box has tight as it can get for the components that are inside. We have gone with something totally new, incorporating a decent sized battery, a different kind of drive, and a totally different form factor. Some people seem to like it.

Next the build quality is so shoddy, it makes me think that they are made in Malaysia with no quality assurance

They *are* made in Malaysia as you know. I have a fair idea of the level of QA that is undertaken and I wouldn't expect many problems to get past inspection (station inspection, line inspection (bare), line inspection (assembled), packout inspection, sampling, etc etc. I haven't seen your unit (in focus anyway) so I can't comment on it specifically. My *beta* units are fine though. I don't have a production unit yet as customers come first.

You see, the ipod, and Archos, along with so many other players just WORK!

You're talking about mass storage class. This is one that I really can't cover all over again. Using MSC to load content is SUCH A BAD IDEA in so many ways. Especially for a hard drive player. Even Apple acknowledge that - MSC is for file taxi only, to load content you have to use iTunes or MMJB.

In our case MSC is not an option because we use a journalled file system. Anyway I will skip this one, suffice to say there is some work in progress that will silence the critics on this topic.

RMML

I think this is a unique and innovative development for a portable player. Installing the JVM is a pain on Windows because of the matter of a teeny disagreement between Sun and MS - otherwise you would not have had to install a thing. Anyway, I'm getting an updated RMML onto the web site very soon.

Also, it seems odd that I am unable to listen to music while I am transferring music

Not ideal, but that's the nature of the USB chip we use which grabs the IDE bus all for itself (the same as iPod and most other PortalPlayer devices). Ethernet doesn't *need* to do this but not doing to raises a number of issues which could not be resolved in the 1.0 time frame. Since we already have about 2 million Rio products in circulation which stop playback during transfer we didn't anticipate too many complaints. Of course the car player, which was the inspiration for the Ethernet functionality in Karma, does the same thing. None of the competitors have Ethernet so I can't compare with them.

Where are my install options when I install RMM

Last minute change, unfortunately. The three apps that get installed are kept separate to make online updating easier, however the three MSI interfaces one after another annoyed the hell out of the beta team. The only fix possible in the remaining project time was to install silently. The proper (being worked on) fix is to wrap the whole thing up in a wizard which will guide you through the install process and also double up as the online update tool.

Just try to enter an IP address and tell me how many times you have to re-enter.

We tried out several text/numeric entry systems, none of which is perfect given the physical interface that is available. My favourite was a mobile phone style keypad which could be used for numerics, latin text and even katakana and hiragana. That was ruled out because the American market is apparantly not as used to mobile texting as Europe and Japan.

Even so, the numeric entry for IP dialogs couldn't be a lot easier. Scroll through a list of numerals with the wheel and press to select. What would you suggest instead?

It seems like there are so many interface inconsistencies that it makes using the player very cumbersome. Sometime you press the wheel, sometimes you press the button, sometimes you push up and down, and sometimes you scroll up and down. Give me a break!

I guess I suck at UI design, but I find it pretty easy to use. Where I think the confusion creeps in is that many functions can be driven either from the wheel or from the joystick. In some instances the wheel works best (e.g. lists, because they are inherently 1 dimensional) and in others the joystick is better (e.g. dialogs, as the controls form 1 dimension and the options for each control form a 2nd dimension). Maybe it would have been better to lock into one or the other. In fact you can throw away the wheel and still retain 99% of functionality.

When I fast forward in the song using the wheel, why does the music stop playing?

Because at the last minute a particular optimisation was thought to be a possible risk of instability. It was removed and put into a subsequent release - 1.1 - which was intended to be online by first customer shipment. Annoyingly it has missed by a couple of days. I hope it will be online Monday, then you'll notice UI responsiveness, Ethernet speed, scanning in tracks and other things all speed up significantly. Do you remember iPod 1.0?

Lastly, there are so many little UI bugs it is painful

Again, the general UI design would be my fault. But I like it, and it went through usability testing and a full beta programme. Little glitches (like a control not centered) will get ironed out. "Release early release often" might not fully apply as we're actually rather late - but the "often" bit is certainly planned.

but so far it seems like this will not even come close to competing with the ipod

Sorry to hear that. We worked very hard, and continue to do so with downloadable firmware updates already scheduled over the next several months.

Rob