Blipman, some of these questions were answered in this thread already, I'll try to clarify a bit and offer my own personal opinions for each.

1) Can I get a spare remote anywhere should I lose mine (yes I know the Rio shop is closed, and no I don't want the Kenwood). I'm screwed, aren't I?

Correct, there are no distribution channels for the Rio remote, unless you get lucky and someone has an extra on Ebay (unlikely anyone would sell just the remote though). The Kenwood unit is not that bad, don't knock it. A comparison of the features of the units can be found here, and a detailed chart of all the buttons is here.

2) What is the requirement for a track to increment the played or skipped counter? Also, I saw the skipped counter but now can't find it.... where'd I see that?

Already explained in the thread. Played=5 seconds. Skipped=Not implemented yet. There is a bug in the current software which causes a shorter-than-5-second track to never be marked as played. Such as test tracks and some of the TMBG "fingertips" tracks.

3) I once saw a scrolling Synchronise icon on my player during a synch, but now it doesn't show it.... just an observation....

Already mentioned in the thread: Your player was in standby mode when it was being synchronized, so the screen was turned off. Detailed description of Standby Mode can be found in the FAQ here.

4) Can you cut off blocks from mp3 files at the beginning or end, or is it the sort of compression scheme that would require recompression for that? If not, any simple apps to do this with?

Yes, many apps can do this such as the aforementioned GapKiller and MP3Trim. You can also learn the MP3 header specification and do this yourself by hand in a binary file editor program. It's actually pretty easy to see where the blocks start.

Pay no attention to the warning elsewhere in this thread about the lack of frame-independence. If you're cutting the beginning and ending of songs, there's no danger as far as I can tell. All MP3 decoders I've seen handle an empty or deleted bit reservior gracefully. Once, I even spliced two "trimmed" MP3s together and it worked. Although on the 1.03 empeg decoder, I got a slight blip of static at the splice point, on the 2.0 empeg decoder, the splice point plays perfectly.

5) Is there some super boffin trick to show the Artist as well as the Title in the show current and next info view?

No. I have weaned myself off of the Now and Next view and hardly use it any more. Instead, I leave the player in "Info:Transient" mode all the time, and then when I need to see the song details, I press and hold the bottom button on the faceplate to toggle it back to "Info:Track" mode (which was the last mode I'd selected prior to Transient). This lets me occasionally check artist/album details without sacrificing the visuals and the Transient.

6) How do the neon lenses work? I thought they just had a bevelled edge and refracted/reflected the VFD display, however I'm sure I've seen a photo with a blue face and red neon.

No, you saw a photo with a RED neon face and blue lighted buttons.

It is as you described, the beveled edges of the plastic reflect whatever light is coming from under the face. In the case of players that have done the button hack, the white button LEDs that are under the faceplate will make the neon edges glow more brightly.

7) I've noticed sometimes the Swap button (on the remote) does nothing. You then give it a second press and it works fine from there, until you jump to the next song, and then again it will sometimes not work the first press. Is this a known bug?

I have not noticed this. However it might be related to this FAQ entry. Also, are you running Beta 13? It has improved the responsiveness of the controls over Beta 11 (although I think there is still some work to be done in this area).