notice i swapped the v.3 iPod over the v.2 iPod for the reasons listed.
Karma is my #1 choice now. it has only a few disadvantages. one being there are no batteries available for replacement, but that shouldn't be an issue for years and there's a good chance laptopsforless.com will have a part for it by then, as they have for most other major brands. the hard drive is available on the open market now for $100 or so and according a Rio engineer the Karma's maintance mode can be used to format it for use. i guess it would be nice to have a 40gb option but the Karma is allready thick enough as it is and two platters would add another 3mm or so. it does require software to interface with a PC and is not mass storage device complient, although I have decided that this matters little after examing my actual usage. I fill a player initially and then have little interaction with the software subseqently. I have a pen-drive that I use as a file transport (which I use rarely anyway). it has hardware support for an in-line remote though there is none available. it does not come with a protective case and only one aftermarket case is available (and its a little amatuerish).
i'm 80% done with a comprehensive review where all details are examined, so i'm not going to go too much into here, but basically, there are many areas where it is simply unequaled: GUI, EQ, library navigation efficiency, available track details, Dock, Value, and user-customization. in other areas it is as good as the best of the rest, including sound quality. only exception I can think of off the top of my head is the playlisting which is trumped only by the Nomad OS since it offers "Nested" playlists compared to Karma/DJ/iPod which simply dump individual tracks into the on-the-go playlist.
The design itself is debatable but I really like it personally. It's comfortable and functional while being innovative and unique. No one's going to mistake this one for anything else. It's smaller than it may appear in pics.
Line-output on the dock is clean. RCA outputs are preferable to the mini-jacks found on other players. I have a rather expensive RCA to mini cable that connects the dock to my portable amp. the dock does _not_ have to be powered for the line-output to function, and the combined bulk is still less than an NJB3.
Some people are concerned about its durability but the only other guy I know with one, his works fine after 6 months. Also the original firmware bugs have been ironed out it seems. Mine is 100% stable so far with latest firmware.
