Rating: 
Summary: It does the job!
Review: The Rio Diamond 500 is an excellent MP3 player. It's small, light, looks sharp, and the buttons are easily accessible. It does have a few drawbacks, however: The software that comes with it is not exactly user friendly. The software wants to scan your entire harddrive for mp3 files, when it does, it finds all kinds of mp3 files that you would never consider putting on your Rio. In my case, it found well over 400 short mp3 files within my Age of Empires directory. It took me forever purging them from the database. There doesn't seem to be a way of telling the software to *only* look for mp3 files in a certain folder. Also, loading mp3 files into your Rio's memory should be much easier. What's wrong with just dragging and dropping from any directory - even out of Windows Explorer? But no ....... The documentation that comes with the player is poor. Good luck trying to figure out how to use the bookmark feature. But, I'm just being picky. I'm satisfied with the product and it does everything I need it to do.
Rating: 
Summary: Audible.com finally work great - 28+ hrs spoken audio
Review: This was the primary reason I bought this device - and it took a little while to get all the bugs worked out of the software - but rio and audible have finally done it. +14hrs battery / +28hrs spoken audio - I've just listened to the unabridged Atlas Shrugged and loved it - I could never get myself to get through the actual book before! I love the fact that my commute too and from work is now filled w/ enlightening and entertaining media - worth Every penny - one of the few electronic purchases I never regreted and use every day.
Rating:
Summary: Good product, but needs instructions
Review: Once I finally figured out how to use the player, I liked it a lot. It has good sound quality, although I used Sony headphones instead of the earbuds that came with the player. However, it came with no instructions (other than how to install the Audio Manager software onto my PC) on how to copy music onto the player or how to use any of its functions. I tried their website, and found it difficult to use the online "manual." In fact, one item on it was inaccurate. So RIO loses major points for having no instruction manual, but once you (or, as in my case, a techie friend) figure it out, it's a great device.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Mp3 Player Out There
Review: This thing rocks! I got mine and it's been 2 months and it's working great! Perfect sound, hardly uses up its battery, and looks cool... if you are looking for what one to get, get this!
Rating:
Summary: Great if you're a tech junkie...
Review: I listen to music while driving to college every day and have been using my portable CD player with a cassette adapter to listen to my music. I grew tired of it skipping and sometimes even powering down. I first looked at CD players with a bigger anti-skip buffer, but instead decided to go the way of the tech junkie and look for an mp3 player. I purchased this player 2 weeks ago. I've had it for a week and I'm very happy I bought it. As you probably can guess, it doesn't skip when you hit a bump. The sound output is amazing (provided you don't even try the ear buds that it comes with. They're not koss' best product) and the memory is more than enough to store a selection of mp3's. The controls are easy to get used to, but using the "multi," and "browse" buttons simultaneously can get a tad confusing if you're not careful. It isn't SDMI compliant. I view this as a good thing. The only bad points are... It drains batteries quickly (about 16 hours of play time per battery). If you buy this player, get some Rayovac Renewals and a charger or you'll end up buying batteries more than once a month. Oddly enough, it seems to zap the battery more than usual when you turn it on or off. Diamond doesn't straight forwardly give you a tech support option. You'll have to look around their website for a while. This is just a suggestion. Whenever you go to add or delete music over the USB connection, connect the player and turn it on before you run the program. In short, all around good product for the tech junkie/music enthusiast.
Rating:
Summary: A High Quality Mp3 Player With Software-Related Issues
Review: A better buy than all the other players on the market at the moment. It offers a large onboard memory (64MB), expansion (though it would be better to wait for higher density cards to emerge than buy the ones available at the moment), high quality playback and fast USB download capabilities. However, the software requires much perseverence. The basic bundle completely confuses the way your mp3s are stored on your HD and the upgrades (Audio Manager 3.2 being the most conspicuous of the bunch) occasionally lead to lower quality playback. Also, you will only ever get about 10 hours play out of the batteries rather than the quoted 13. Still, this is still better than most other products. In short, as long as you stick with the original software and wait for better cards, the Rio 500 is undoubtedly the best product available at the moment.
Rating:
Summary: The Best RIo Ever
Review: The RIO 500 IS ONE OF THE BEST MP3 PLAYERS ON THE MARKET. AMAZON.COMHAS THE LOWEST PRICE ON IT AND THATS AMAZING. NOT ONLY DOES IT HAVE 64MB ON BOARD BUT IT CAN BE UPGRADABLE. THE HEADPHONES ARE GREAT TOO. THE ONLY THING I TINK IS WIERD IS THAT THEY CHARGE [less] FOR THE GRAY RIO AND [more] FOR THE TEAL AND BLUE. THE RIO 500 HAS THE EST SOUND QUALITY I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE.
Rating: 
Summary: MP3 players suck buy minidisc
Review: With a MP3 player like this one you are limited to about an hour of music. A minidisc player can copy CDs MP3s and Tapes. Each disc is about a $1.50 and you can get a good Player/Recorder for $150+.
Rating:
Summary: awesome product, but the software
Review: I just got this today. I love it. The software sucks though. It takes a while to get used to this software. I want to figure out a way that i can just drag and drop files instead of using their software. It's too hard to find the files i want. I know where all my MP3s are on my hard drives but when they are all mixed together in the the software they give you, it's hard to find what I want to load on the MP3 player. I would definitely buy this product though.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice gadget, prefer my CD walkman
Review: MP3's just doesn't sound as good as CD. Downloading's a real pain, nothing like as easy as swapping out a disk. If you want lots of choice and quality buy a CD-ROM burner and make lots of friends. If MP3's your game then this isn't a bad unit but CD wins for me.
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