Good Karma

OK, first impressions on the Rio Karma mp3 player (aka "my shiny new toy"): I think I'm going to be pretty happy with it. It's attractive-looking, conveniently small, and has an easy-to-read display. The menu interface is mostly pretty intuitive. A few things confused me just a little at first, but turned out not to be that difficult to figure out. The controls are a little weird. There's a raised button which can be used for selecting menu items and toggling modes, but which is also used to control the play, pause, stop, etc. functions by pushing it back and forth. It really just isn't the way buttons are normally used, and it took me a while to figure out what the heck they were telling me to do with it. I think it's going to take a little getting used to, but I don't think there's anything actually wrong with it. We'll see how easy it is to operate when I'm carrying it around with me and using it to play back music instead of just fiddling around.

The software's easy enough to use, and file transfer from the PC to the player via USB is extremely fast. Even so, it's going to take me ages to get all my albums ripped and transferred. I've made a good start already, but considering that I'm going through my CDs alphabetically, right now the machine knows a shitload of Alan Parsons Project tunes and not a whole lot else...