I want to love the Rio Karma, but I am afraid I can't. After using it for one day I am just plainly disappointed.

I have so many gripes, I just don't know where to start.

Build and Design:

First off, if you were to remove the bumpers from my Archos Recorder the player is THICKER than the Archos. Now we are talking about a 3 year old recorder that uses AA batteries places on top of a standard laptop hard drive. Even with the bumpers, then Archos is just SLIGHTLY thicker. However, in the height category, the Karma is about 1 inch shorter then the Archos which is nice. But, when it comes to playing, the player spends most of the time either in my bag or pocket, and the design is just NOT pocket friendly.

Next the build quality is so shoddy, it makes me think that they are made in Malaysia with no quality assurance. The power backlight button on mine is on an angle and the plastic molding around the volume buttons seems crummily put together.

You see, the problem here is that the ipod has the HUGE majority of the market share and to gain even a niche you will have to outdo the ipod significantly. Nothing in the poor design or build would make me choose this player over the ipod, and I am by no means an ipod lover. It is just that is the current standard, and it is quite a high standard.

Also, it seems so many things have been overlooked and I am using a beta product. For instance this is one that just boggles the mind. To plug the player into a new machine you have a few options:

1. bring the USB cable with you, load the drivers, load the software, and use the player on your machine with the EXTREMLY buggy RMM
2. plug the player into the dock, and then plug that into your network, and then open up the player in the web browser, then download your favorite zipping utility, a java VM from Sun, and then run that.

You see, the ipod, and Archos, along with so many other players just WORK! I can plug my Archos into any machine that is newer then windows 95 (Mac, PC, even many Linux boxes) and it just shows up as a hard drive. No drivers… Nothing! With the Karma I am unable to access it at work no matter what I do. I can’t install drivers on my machine, and I do not have permissions to install the Sun VM. Not only that, but who wants to bring the base everywhere you go (it is very heavy which is a good thing) and where is my Ethernet dongle (it seems like this player was made for such a thing). Why oh why is everything on the player zipped (Documentation, Software). What a pain in the ass. Also, I TYPED IN THE IP ADDRESS TO GET TO THE PLAYER IN MY WEB BROWSER. WHY DO I NEED TO KEEP TYPING IN THE IP ADDRESS OF THE PLAYER? Also, why the password? You would think you could at least disable this. I would think that you could just go to the IP address and a web page would open much like the way I can use my empeg or my router.

Also, it seems odd that I am unable to listen to music while I am transferring music. Considering you use the dock to listen to the player on your stereo, and if it is in the dock, then most likely you have it plugged into your network. And, it transferred about 7 songs, would play for a second, then continue transferring (under RMML) then erase the previously transferred songs? There are so many bugs with both RMM and RMML I don’t know where to start. RMML shows tracks on the player, that I can not access with the player. It constantly crashes, bugs out, etc.

Where are my install options when I install RMM. I would rather it not be installed in my Program Files folder, but instead my Music Software folder. Plus, why am I “not permitted” to drag and drop music to my device? COME ON MAN!

Interface:

The interface is so awkward for the most part. The screen is only partially used for so many options. It is a waste of beautiful screen real-estate. Just try to enter an IP address and tell me how many times you have to re-enter.

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!

When I fast forward in the song using the wheel, why does the music stop playing? I would think that the buffer would contain all the music, but when I ff just a bit ahead in a song it stops and seems like it rebuffers or something like that. Try this: ff using the wheel through a few songs, and then rewind a few songs back. Many times the wheel just sops moving the cursor. Sometimes it speeds up, sometimes it slows down, and other times it just stops all together. Lots of times when I am in the UI and scrolling down the wheel just stops and I have to scroll up so it will continue down and vice-versa.

Lastly, there are so many little UI bugs it is painful. Go under Settings/Network/ why is DHCP at the top of the bubble? Center it. Why even use the bubbles at all? It makes a clumsy interface. Someone needs to look at the ipod or irive series of players (I have no experience with the Creative players)

I have yet to use all the functions, but so far it seems like this will not even come close to competing with the ipod.

I will continue to update this as I try out the new features, but as it stands unless I find some features that REALLY blow me out of the water, this one is going back to CircuitCity.