I’m not trying to hide anything. In the past I have written some code for the open source Archos firmware (Rockbox). I just want the perfect portable hard drive MP3 player.

Yes, the Archos still suffers from many, many issues (many of them can not be fixed in software) but, through 2 years of software development it has become a pretty polished piece of firmware (a plug in system, full playlist editing capabilities, many games, configurable fonts, configurable info screens (much like emphatic) etc.)

Pretty much the Archos is quite similar to the empeg with the ability to hack it to your desire (depending on how much time/effort) people/you want to put into it. This is exactly what I think many people are looking for. The number of people who have bought the Archos because of Rockbox is simply stunning.

I currently own an empeg and love its capabilities. It works perfectly for what it was designed to do.

However, from previews of the Karma, I thought it would be THE player. But, it has nowhere the polish of the empeg. Not only that, but it has many shortcomings and bugs that should not be present even in a 1.0 product.

I have owned or still own an ipod, archos player, archos recorder, neuros, creative jukebox, the empeg car player, numerous flash, CD, and other various mp3 players. I have owned the Diamond PMP300 (the first MP3 player) the Mambo X (the first MP3 CD player), etc. I have over 1300 CDs and I want to be able to access them and play them whenever and wherever. It seems that every product misses here and there.

With the Karma the whole file taxi is a big issue. Having a compact portable hard drive in your pocket makes it difficult to understand why it can not be mounted as a standard hard drive. Why not make a standard fat32 partition, and still have the proprietary Karma partition?

Rob, I don’t mean to sound harsh or uninformed, but does your team not have a UI person? It seems that there should be a design team for the actual hardware and another for the software. Many people are mistaken when they think that a UI can just be thrown on top of some code, but unless your code is perfectly modular, then this usually doesn’t work as planned. The UI developer needs to work with the “engine” developers throughout the entire process.

The hardware while being larger then advertised is incredibly powerful and I would love to see what can be accomplished with it. Just look at the synching animation. It’s beautiful. Why isn’t the screen used to its potential. I am thinking about embedded album covers that are viewable on the device, full screen animations, etc.

I will keep the Karma through my trial period and hopefully these firmware upgrades that everyone seems to have except for the customers will make it work better. I truly believe that with all the bugs present that you should have held off on the release until closer to the holiday season.