Supposedly, once I actually bother to connect it to something, the newish firmware has an update to the CDDB too.

Unfortunately, you won't see its software auto-update feature working. Cancelled product and all. So you can't get your new CDDB that way.

At www.rioaudio.com, there is a downloadable ISO image that you can use for an update (burn onto a CD, insert CD into Central). There are two of them, a smaller one with just the firmware, and a larger one with a newer CDDB. However, at last report, the larger of the two files is corrupted. So only get the smaller one. That smaller one is necessary, though, since it fixes a couple of egregious bugs.

If it can't connect to the internet, it defers tagging new MP3s until it can connect (I think?)

It defers tagging until you go in and select "Connect now to download album information (3 albums)" or something like that. I don't think it does that part automatically.

it tries ONLY THE TRACKS THAT FAILED LAST TIME.

Yup, it's pretty smart about that stuff.

Also, try multiple-CD mode, that's pretty cool. However, only do it AFTER you've gotten the 1.04 software update installed. One of the fixed bugs is that it sometimes rebooted if it was in multiple-CD mode.

And don't try to do your whole collection in one go. Just do it in batches, say 10 CDs or so. Because it encodes in the background, there's a such thing as feeding it too much to chew on at once.