[ooheadsoo]

I'm trying to avoid paying the premium on the ipod. If I came across one cheap, I may go for it but the battery life is a bit low and price is a bit high if bought new. At one point, when I was just considering music only, I thought 5gb would be enough, but as portable storage, no way.

 

[Edvard_Grieg]

If you are worried about the software with the Rio, I find the software to be basic but useful and it works quite well for me. The advantage you'd have, is with the dock there is an ethernet port, and the Karma acts as a webserver containing a Java version of the software. This way you could just bring the dock with you to a friend's house, hook it up over ethernet, and the software files would be accessible from the Karma. Further, since it is a Java app, it will work on any OS that supports Java (re: Linux, Unix, Solaris, MacOS, etc etc).

Also, at some point down the road, the Karma should be getting a firmware upgrade for true USB MSC compatibility a la the Carbon. However, it is something that has never been 'officially' announced, so people's best guess would be when the Chroma comes out, which is looking like March. However, no one really knows with Rio.

 

[ooheadsoo]

I didn't think about it that way. So you can transfer data on and off the karma easily via ethernet?

 

[mbryda]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ooheadsoo I'm trying to avoid paying the premium on the ipod. If I came across one cheap, I may go for it but the battery life is a bit low and price is a bit high if bought new. At one point, when I was just considering music only, I thought 5gb would be enough, but as portable storage, no way.

12 hours and 40GB isn't that bad @ $399. 12 hours and 20GB isn't bad @ $299 - close enough to similar players that the "premium" is a non-issue. (Same as the rest of Apple's hardware - if you do like for like it's just a tad more expensive.)

I haven't found the battery life to be an issue - I can listen to music all day @ work, on the ride to and from, and for an hour walking the dog and still have battery life left. The 4G iPods are actually very close to Apple's specs.

 

[ooheadsoo]

Realistically speaking, I need to keep the price under $200. Now, that's doable for lots of DAPs, but not for an ipod.