I got a Karma about 3 weeks ago... I know a bit late to the game but since I had other MP3 portables and it was pretty pricey, I could never justify it. Well, I got the itch for one and got one with the startup issue with dock and everything for like $75 shipped. One good hit to the back and it was working again. Well, I'd done a lot of reading prior to getting the Karma and I'm so glad that Jemplode works with it. I do not like the Rio Media Manager because I have well over 200GB of MP3's and it takes forever to go through and create the database and since I add a lot weekly to it, it was too cumbersome to use if I only wanted to upload one new album I got. I was using it with my old Rio Riot and hated it but that unit was touchy anyway and it was one of the few ways to get music into it reliably. Anyway, using Jemplode with the Karma is perfect because I also use it with my Empeg car player.

Anyway, after using the Karma quite a bit at the pool and work and at various other things, I am very pleased with it... But I think I can see why it didn't fare too well in the marketplace (other than poor advertising). I use the dock and ethernet to transfer files, but the average user doesn't know how to configure it into a network... And as with the Rio Riot, the USB drivers seem a bit flakey from all I've read. I know Cambridge had no part of the Riot, only bringing a point. Anyway, it seems like there has been a lot of frustration because the USB is not universal and seems to conflict with chipsets... The average user doesn't have the facilities to troubleshoot this and feels they were ripped off as they do not want to have to buy more parts just to get music into their player. Then there's the lack of a case which makes it difficult to use portably and it seems a fair share have been dropped leading to the well known hard drive issue. I have mine in a padded Gameboy case that fits the Karma and headphones nicely. But then again, I can lay the unit down everywhere I use it and would look into a Mindknob case if I were going to try to use it more portably.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Karma, like the Empeg vefore it, really seems best suited to technical people... People who are willing to be careful and learn and can handle what could be the difficulty in getting everything up and running. I love mine... in fact that I bought another broken one to try to get running for a spare.

I bought 2 Nitruses also and there seems to be a fundamental flaw in how the drive is mounted in there as there is NO shock protection and those drives seem pretty sensitive. Of the 2 I have, one had a cracked hard drive disk and had sheared the read head off... the other had issues with the read head as well... I like the size and features (I bought both broken... one worked for a bit. the other never did). But now I'm looking for a replacement drive which is near impossible. Cornice has a 3GB for $100 but I've heard they won't work with the Nitrus... does anyone know if this is true? Anyone have a spare Cornice drive they're willing to sell?

Another thing I'm wondering is will there ever be a Hijack for Karma? I know you can get to the Config.ini on the Karma but doesn't look like much there... is there a list of what can be added via the ini file?

Anyway... my two cents...