Uhm, okay.. After a 11-hour work day, worried about the ^&*#^&@ Remote VFD boards for the Empeg, I get home and am surprised to find that my Karma arrived today. Wasn't expecting to see it until late tomorrow. So I'm up at 2:30am playing with it.

I don't know what others have issues with. Really. Maybe it's 'cuz my last portable player was a RIO PMP300 (which, I'll add, had everything I needed, save for the amount of space.). Maybe it's cuz is 2:30am. (Tho that last reason may work both ways..)

Anyways, within 10 minutes I had the whole interface worked out. it's sweet. Extremely sweet. Thanks, guys. The sample music let me play with it before having to even worry about connecting it up. (Which I won't do until tomorrow. Really.)

So, in the 30 mintes, I'm heavilly impressed. Even is I can't type straight. Menu's work fine for me. No problems with the settings. Controls are fine (save for one isssue, below), in fact I find myself almost exclusively using the thumb-thingie. Not the wheel. Screen works well, I was afraid that visuals on LCD would look blurred. They don't. Granted, they're not as crisp as the Empeg's VFD, but they're not bad at all... Sound quality is great. Hate the earbuds tho. I got strange-shaped ears or somethin'. Never could use them.. Anyways, I called in sick tomorrow. Going to go out and use it in The Wild.

(I had one issue with the thumb control. The same issue someone else had brought up. Friggin' thing is too easy to push in, and not enough tactile responce to let you know when you hit a direction. I found myself hitting it down over and over, not quite feeling the 'click' of it, thinking I didn't hit it hard enough. It was too easy to hit it in and select something before I was ready. Maybe I just have a big thumb. What's interesting is I found myself continusouly using it, even with this user problem than move to the wheel.. I was also hoping I could make the Menu Button give me the Track Details on a push (either Long or Otherwise). Was kinda dissapointed to see that wasn't the case. Maybe in a future upgrade? Out of the box, firmware was running 1.25.)

Me. Listening to the patter of.. a small MP3 player.