Rio Carbon + extended warranty a good MP3 player option?

[coolred]

I am looking for an MP3 player to use at work and at other times aroudn the house or wherever. There are tons of choices obviously. I don't have much music, and could probablly live with a 1GB flash drive, but having the extra storage, especially since it works as a UMS device is great. Although I doubt I need the space in those big old 30+GB machines.


The Rio Carbon looks great, it seems to get great reviews, with the exception of many user reviews. I tend to bellieve user reviews over regular reviewers. But from what I have heard, only the people that have problems or think the device is the greatest thing ever, are the ones that post reviews. I know the carbon seems to take a lot of hits due to it breaking or whatever. And that would suck, but if i back it up with an extended warranty, would it be a good option. Or do I need to shoot for an Ipod mini or something else entirely?

 

[lokiju]

Creative Zen Touch Micro.

 

[axelfox]

That's what I did.

 

[yllus]

It's an excellent option compared against the iPod Mini! I'm very happy with my Rio Carbon 5GB. The biggest complaint I have is that there's no way to create/amend playlists on the fly. I think that caveat is well offset by its USB driver-less transfer capabilities which let you use the Carbon as a portable HDD and even charge off of the connection.

I wrote a 'review' of the Carbon versus the Mini in this thread:

Rio Carbon > iPod Mini?

 

[0roo0roo]

mini

 

[RbSX]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
mini

Keep smokin that mary jane.

For alot cheaper then the iPod Mini it's an excellent option.

My brother has the mini and I have the Carbon.. and I can't decide which one is better... but one thing I do know is that I've got 1gb of more space and I saved 70 bucks!

 

[coolred]

Originally posted by: yllus
It's an excellent option compared against the iPod Mini! I'm very happy with my Rio Carbon 5GB. The biggest complaint I have is that there's no way to create/amend playlists on the fly. I think that caveat is well offset by its USB driver-less transfer capabilities which let you use the Carbon as a portable HDD and even charge off of the connection.

I wrote a 'review' of the Carbon versus the Mini in this thread:

Rio Carbon > iPod Mini?

Yeah i had already seen your review, not bad.

I am not worried about ammending/creating playlists on the fly. I will be using this at work, so I won't have time to be able to do that even if I wanted to, which i doubt I would have a need to.



blazert40, why the creative, and 0roo0roo, why the mini. Not disagreeing with you. I just hate it when people give an option without a reason for it.

 

[HaxorNubcake]

I have a carbon it's a great player....a slight thread hijack: does anyone with a carbon ever have problems with like delays when seeking a song?

 

[coolred]

Also, I managed to accumulate about 20-25 songs on itunes, from the free pepsi giveaway. I don't suppose these are playable without some sort of modification(to the song, not the player) on the Rio, right?

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: RyanSengara

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
mini

Keep smokin that mary jane.

For alot cheaper then the iPod Mini it's an excellent option.

My brother has the mini and I have the Carbon.. and I can't decide which one is better... but one thing I do know is that I've got 1gb of more space and I saved 70 bucks!

its only 33 dollars cheaper on amazon. he's paying for the extra warrantee because he knows 90 days is shady. that nulifies the price difference a bit.

mini interface is hard to beat. mini is slightly smaller. and mini g2's sound quality is decent..and so is battery life.

 

[RbSX]

Originally posted by: HaxorNubcake
I have a carbon it's a great player....a slight thread hijack: does anyone with a carbon ever have problems with like delays when seeking a song?

I do sometimes..

 

[Rudee]

The Carbon can function as an external drive. The mini can't. Carbon is smaller, holds more music and sounds better IMHO.

 

[coolred]

Ah, I went with the Ipod mini after all. I will try it and if I don't like it, I can return it in 30 days. The rio seemed wider then i expected, and the Ipod just seemed nicer, and more well put together. Plus like 0roo0roo said, since I purchased at best buy, I could either pay 169.99(149.99 after a 20 rebate, which I hear has a possibility of never showing up)plus 29.99 for the extended warranty, for a final cost of about 180.00. Or I could spend the extra 20 for the Ipod. Sure the Ipod has 1 GB less storage, but like I said. I would probablly be okay with 1GB flash players with the amount of music I have.

Just in the store, I liked the mini better in a few ways, time will tell if I continue to like it. So now what did I lose in getting the mini instead of the rio? I know I am down 1GB of storage, how does the mini function as a mass storage device, if at all? Anything else?


Also my prices are actual prices, I actually had a 10% off coupon I got from another site, although I am not even 100% sure how legit it was since, shortly after it was posted the thread was locked. But anyways, I gave it to the guy and he said "this won't work on the Ipods". Even though it didn't state that anywhere on the coupon. I said fine use it on the neoprene case I got with it. He used the coupon and totaled me out, and at the time I didn't think nothing of the price he said. Although he seemed to notice soemthign since he dug the coupon back out of the trash and starte dlooking at it. I left got out to my car, and started to think, man that seemed cheap. My total was 24x.xx. I bought a 199.99 ipod, a 29.99 cas, and a 15 dollar Itunes card(not actually for me, I got it for my mom, she refuses to use her credit cards online, but likes itunes), so I expected around 260.00 total price. I got to looking at my receipt and sure enough the coupon took the 10% off the Ipod, so really I got it for 179.99, so that makes it even better.

 

[AnyMal]

Heck , for about the same price you could have gotten Irivere H10 with more storage, more feature, plus a color screen. But to each his own I suppose.

 

[coolred]

The H10 was about 40 bucks more, the extra storage is not my top priority as I previously stated. The FM radio would have been a bonus, but not a nessecity. The JPEG viewing again is kind aneat, but not somethign I would use very often if at all after the initial, thats neat factor.

And the 12 hour battery life is a bit less then the other 2,

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Rudee
The Carbon can function as an external drive. The mini can't. Carbon is smaller, holds more music and sounds better IMHO.

http://www.ipodessentials.co.uk/docs/ipodFAQ/#storeipod

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: coolred
The H10 was about 40 bucks more, the extra storage is not my top priority as I previously stated. The FM radio would have been a bonus, but not a nessecity. The JPEG viewing again is kind aneat, but not somethign I would use very often if at all after the initial, thats neat factor.

And the 12 hour battery life is a bit less then the other 2,

the mini has 18hrs now

Ah, I went with the Ipod mini after all. I will try it and if I don't like it, I can return it in 30 days.

enjoy thats all that matters

 

[coolred]

So I can use it has a mass storage device, but it requires software to be loaded on each computer first. Thats kinda gay, but I am not sure how often it will be used as a MS device any way.

 

[AnyMal]

Originally posted by: coolred
The H10 was about 40 bucks more, the extra storage is not my top priority as I previously stated. The FM radio would have been a bonus, but not a nessecity. The JPEG viewing again is kind aneat, but not somethign I would use very often if at all after the initial, thats neat factor.

And the 12 hour battery life is a bit less then the other 2,

They're about $180.00 on eBay. Regardless, Apple makes a nice product, albeit overhyped, you'll enjoy it.

 

[0roo0roo]

theres plenty of free software for the ipods like http://www.ephpod.com/ http://ipodlounge.com/

and if u feel nutty http://www.h2oaudio.com/products/iminisv.php

 

[coolred]

I will look into that stuff, so does that ephpod software basically allow drag and drop to the Ipod. I assume it needs to be loaded onto the computer before it will allow the Ipod to connect to the computer?

 

[mwmorph]

Get the Rio Karma. I have one and I can attest it's a GREAT player. just make sure you have an extended warranty. The HDD issues have been worked out but the sreoll whell is still crap. I would use my warranty but being stupid me, i opened up to try to fix it myself. just make sure you have and use a warranty and it'll be the best player you've ever used.

 

[coolred]

From what I understand the karmas are not so easy to come by any more.

As for the mini, do I need to install the software from the CD? I know the manual says too, but I already have itunes installed. I plugged the mini into a usb port, it recognized it and it shows up as a removeable disk drive in my computer, but when I double click on it, it says its not formatted and asks if i want to format it. I don't want to format it and mess it up or anything. But if I don't have to, then i don't want to have to install any extra software either.

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: coolred
From what I understand the karmas are not so easy to come by any more.

As for the mini, do I need to install the software from the CD? I know the manual says too, but I already have itunes installed. I plugged the mini into a usb port, it recognized it and it shows up as a removeable disk drive in my computer, but when I double click on it, it says its not formatted and asks if i want to format it. I don't want to format it and mess it up or anything. But if I don't have to, then i don't want to have to install any extra software either.

http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail....wbfroogle&adcampaign=email,ewbfroogle($190)
http://store.salestores.com/rioka20mp3pl.html($199)

btw, i got mine for $177 shipped from buy.com, but it's out of stock

 

[coolred]

Ah crap, its telling me my USB ports are 1.1, I have an Asus PCDL, which says it has 2.0 USB ports, not sure what the deal is.