... so much to say... all the ideas flowing around this thread makes my head hurt.

I finally used a Rio handheld from this decade for the first time (a Rio Nitrus). I was shocked to see how darn similar it was to the empeg; and how sadly UNDERused it was by the owner. So yes, Peter, maybe some ideas can help Rio users take full advantage of their players.

So, tagging (which seems to be a big hang):
What about some "Wizards" or tutorials to get people through some of the tagging?

When I installed the Nitrus software, I saw it build the Rio Music Manager database, but could that process be kicked up a notch? This is, of course, for "pre-first-upload" setups. Maybe when RMM finds new music on the computer, it could also offer the following options.

Say, have it ask the user if it should go out to allmusic or CDDB and fill in whatever tags it can. Then, it could assume each folder is an album and try to get tags for that "album".

It could even do advanced genre checking: If three albums with the same artist have two different genres, make the minority one the same as the majority. Maybe the same could go for inconsistant artist tags. But I'm a full-album guy; what about proper tags on single tracks?

However, all this cool tagging is moot if the user doesn't know how to take advantage of it. Maybe "Tip of the Day" in RMM (or even on the device) could show the user cool sort functions or playlist tricks. Maybe a little tutorial within RMM upon first install or after the first upload.

Maybe a little more marketing effort for software, showing that it really is (apparently) better than iPod; print ads, website ads, etc. I can picture a print ad saying: "Rio Nitrus Trip # 302: Sort by genre to suit your mood; in 1 easy step. Can your iPod do this?" Maybe tips on the website. Marketing marketing marketing. Get the chaps' hard work known to the masses.

And on the side:
Speedy67: I've been using Tag&Rename 2.1 for 1.5 years to rename 6,000+ songs. New versions seem buggy but I've never had a problem with this one. And it lets you use allmusic.com or freedb (which I use).