and I doubt they've fixed all their wonderful firmware quirks.

They haven't. The last firmware update was the one that implemented TTS I believe.

I've looked at the Neo forums last week and they were still asking for a new firmware that would fix the shuffle play.

So not much has happened there in the last 2 years.
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Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup