I will agree that my wording was a superlative ("only") and is therefore incorrect. It should have been, "in general, you see a disproportionate number of complaints on bulletin boards". Also, I was referring to bulletin boards in general, such as riovolution, not necessarily this one. This BBS does have a lot of people who aren't complaining, but they're talking about a myriad of different topics not related to the Karma.

My response was in response to Nikko's implication that the Karma was somehow a substandard product because he's read some complaints about it. My point is that there will be complaints about any product, and that you must keep in mind the proportion thing when reading bulletin boards.

One thing that I wanted to clarify. You said

"...other consumers who doubted any link between dying Karmas and bad firmware (or anything else for which Rio could be culpable)... "

I wanted to clarify that if a Karma hard disk fails, there's no way it could be related to the firmware. It's a hardware fault, period. However, Rio still needs to be held responsible for this, and I agree that good customer service in these areas is important. If Rio isn't providing a satisfactory method for replacing a player that's under warranty, then I agree that needs to be addressed.

Just don't say that the entire product line is bad because of a few failed hard disks.