I was just looking at getting a portable MP3 player and I noticed the Rio Nitrus. I've never heard of it before. It looks sharp. Anybody here know anything about it? Dell has it for $280 but it's only 1.5 GB while the Nomad Jukebox is only $300 and it's got 30 GB. Does the Nitrus make up for it in other ways or is it just overpriced?

I think it depends on which Nomad you're talking about. If the 30GB is the type I'm thinking of, then I'd guess that the price difference has to do with size. The Nitrus appears to be aiming at the iPod-sized player, while the Nomad (again, if it's the one I'm thinking of), is the size of a discman.

Nitrus

*edit*
Hmm, well I see the product you're talking about. I assume you're speaking of the 30GB version of this?
On first glance, the Nitrus appears to be much smaller. So my best guess would be that the storage technologies are different.

As noted here the Karma is now selling here for $269 after rebates. It holds 20 GB and is pretty darn small. How does that sound?

I'm sure the Nitrus is great, its price just isn't competitive at the moment.

The big feature of the Nitrus is supposed to be the small size. It is smaller but I would go for the slightly larger Karma for a little more and get 20GB vs 1.5.

Does the Nitrus use the Hitachi (formerly IBM) Microdrive? I was curious about this back when I saw the thing on Cnet video and noticed that it was quite a bit smaller than the karma. - trs

I don't think so not sure though. To me it looks larger in height but much thinner. The Karma is still remarkably small and fits in my pockets easily so I would go for the larger HDD over the smaller size.

It uses the Cornice Storage Element: http://www.corniceco.com/products/index.html

You can get a Nitrus from buy.com for around $200. I was thinking of getting the Cali for running, but now I am interested in the Nitrus (only $20 more). It sounds like there are a bunch of players using the 1.5G disk, so I am holding off until I read more reviews.