Karma (and Nitrus) in labs test - PC Pro July 2004

Just got my latest copy of PC Pro and found a labs test of 9 hard disk audio players.

The summary read: "If you want to organise your music library using ID3 tags then these are the players to go for. Sound quality is excellent, there are some unique features, and navigation and integration with your PC is unsurpassed."

The winner, by the way, was the iRiver iHP-100. The Karma was only 'Recommended' and not the labs winner because: "Our only real gripe ... is the necessity to use the Rio Taxi software to transfer non music files rather than the player appearing as an external drive in Windows.". It also mentions battery life as a reason.

Nick.

While I love my Karma, I must say that I agree with that statement about the Rio Taxi software. I'd like it better too if the Karma would appear as just another drive in explorer.

I'm happy that it doesn't.

Because Windows is coded such that, in order for a drive to appear as a mass storage device (the way this stuff works), it has to use a Windows filesystem (FAT/VFAT/NTFS..). Which is simply another way of forcibly extending the monopoly.

There's definitely a biz-op for a layer of code that translates FAT accesses into an underlying filesystem and back. Very hard to do, but doable.

Cheers

I see what you mean, and I agree with you on the monopoly thing. But you look at it in a diferent way than I am. I'm just looking at it in terms of ease for the user. And it doesn't come any easier than just plugging it in and being able to use it as a drive.

That aside, you DO have a very valid point there.

It's the long term view.

In the short-sighted term, it's better for everyone to CHOOSE to just use FAT and make it compatible. But doing so means that in the longer term, such choice will be removed, locking everyone into a single implementation, with the lack of innovation and improvement that such things bring.

Cheers

I refuse (point blank) to choose any file system that only keeps 2 copies of its FAT.

Couldn't this be achieved through a web interface and ftp?

It could easily be achieved through a web interface and/or FTP (though, you would lose the nice 480mbps USB 2.0 - and yes I know you don't get that, but it's certainly faster than the Karma's 10mbps). It could also be achieved through a driver (a la the driver you can get so Windows 2k/XP can read ext2). The fact is though, Rio just doesn't care enough to bother with that kinda [censored]. tehy have their software, it works well enough, why fix what isn't broken? hell, why fix what is?..but that's a whole other story. Corporate laws.

It's fairly widely rumoured that Rio will be shifting everything over to mass storage class due to demand from retailers and users.

Rob

Is it also widely rumored that there will continue to be a searchable database containing metadata, similar to the current architecture?

Obviously.

Hugo