What I would like to know is which of these took place?

1) an unfinished product was decided to be released with the "We'll patch things along the way" motto that PC game makers are famous for

2) as you mentioned, clearly many bugs were discusses that have annoyed me considerably in the first day. Many of these bugs I consider showstoppers. I keep getting random behavior over and over again. Wait until your product has few enough bugs that it is presentable. In the first hour, YES FIRST HOUR, the player exhibited more random behavior along with RMM and RMML then almost any other software I have used. They were known about, but not fixed?

Press the stick (using it like a button, not like a directional stick), and it will switch the playback screens. Do this until you reach the screen that shows the list of playing songs. It's the screen that resembles the empeg's "now and next" screen, if that helps.

Now, roll the wheel up and down to reach a different song. Then press on the wheel.

Yeah, this is a nice feature, but it is not like the Archos doesn't have this (with Rockbox (open source firmware) though) and if I had to remember a longer button combination, then I would be playing Tekken… just another example of a haphazardly designed interface.

I must say it will be difficult to keep this device unless the Rio DJ and Equalizer REALLY shines. I would be wary of purchasing this unless you have a return guarantee like I have here at Circuit City in USA.

I just can’t believe the entire product is plastic too. My Archos is metal, ipod: metal digital camera: metal, laptop: metal, etc. A $400 plastic device that is pretty fragile just doesn’t sit well here. Moreover, the Nomad Zen is full metal along with the iriver and most other players.

Overall there is just too much random behavior with the device and the software. For others, I would wait at least a few months before looking at the Karma. I will keep it for a few weeks and see if there are any improvements.

I couldn’t get the clearest picture of the button, but you can see the gap at the front of it. Believe me it is much larger then it should be, and the button is off-center.