Rating: 
Summary: Player good - Software bad
Review: This is my second Rio. I love the hardware, and I liked the software that came with my old Rio from 5 years back. The old software would let you drag files from Windows Explorer and drop them into a list that would load them to the Rio. That must have seemed to simple for Sonicblue, because they re-wrote the software so that it tries to scan your PC for songs and then lists them by Genre, Album, etc. If you have a lot of MP3's on your hard drive it becomes impossible to find a song. All 3000 of my MP3's show up under the same category. They do give you a way to browse through directories (folders) on your hard drive and load from there, but they only show you the song title. So you can't sort by date (to find your new songs) or size (to find that 4 Mg file to fill the last bit of memory.) Like I said, I like the player, and the carrying case is great. But they tried to make the software fancy and have instead made it cumbersome.
Rating: 
Summary: Good player for the price
Review: This was very easy to learn to use. It took me about ten minutes to load the software, read the manual, and understand how to load the music and manipulate the display. Like everyone else has said the earphones that come with it suck and they hurt but if you use sony earphones the sound is incredible. I am very happy with my purchase and would recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to use, great price
Review: I was very pleased at how easy it was to get this thing up and running. Transferring music to the player is super easy and quick, and deleting and adding new songs is also incredibly effortless. I bought it for a Christmas present for my 13-year-old and he's been using it without any problem (well, actually there MAY have been a problem, but we weren't sure if it was our laptop, which had been acting squirrelly anyway or the software not being exactly compatible with the XP Microsoft level). I took it off the laptop just in case and put it on my desktop which is ME Microsoft -- again setup was easy. The installation of the MMC card, which I bought from Amazon.com was very easy and added even more memory
Rating:
Summary: Excellent MP3 player
Review: What an excellent MP3 player. Software loaded easily and downloaded the MP3's to the player very quickly. I am amazed how good the sound is and how easy it is to transfer the mp3's. The ear buds sound okay but I prefer using my Koss KSC50 Sportclip stereophone for an even better sound. When working out at the gym I use my Sony Sports Stereo Headphones. I'm surprised no one mentioned the carrying case that comes with this player. It is quite cool looking and although it adds a little bulk it does help protect the player and is quite easy to work the buttons. I have found that my Sandisk 128 MB Secure Digital Card did not work at first but downloading the firmware and software updates helped and now it works just fine. This is the best sounding and easiest to use mp3 player for the price. There is also a rebate being offered till March 30.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice but memory is an issue
Review: Just picked mine up today and after a bit of trouble getting the plugin for my mac I got it working. I intend to use it during workouts after getting tired of radio commercials, belt clip is nice and strong and I tested it out some to make sure it wouldn't fall off. Sound is good through my Sony headphones [but I won't use] the earbuds they give you. I fit 14 songs (approx an hour) on the 64 mb provided, most of which were 160 bit streams. so am investing immediately in another 128mb card to add. Extremely light and compact.
Rating:
Summary: Good hardware and design, less good software
Review: First, the good news: this player is probably the most well-designed and easiest to use of any mp3 players (of its capacity) that I have seen, not to mention it's quite reasonably priced. Though hooking the player up to your PC and uploading songs to it takes the usual basic computer skills, once the songs are on the player, even the computer illiterate (read: my parents!) can figure out how to use the Rio S10 and change the settings. The menus are very intuitive as are the layout of the buttons. The S10 comes with 64 MB internal memory (which is, to be honest, not nearly enough), and I just added another 128 MB, and it was a breeze to do (just buy the MMC card, open the player where the battery goes, and slide the MMC card in into the only obvious slot it could possibly go) and it worked right off the bat. Further, the little cover case that comes with it fits perfectly, protecting the player. The size of the whole unit is smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and easily fits in my pocket. The in-ear headphones that come with it are pretty much junk, but that's to be expected, I guess. Now, the less good news: when I first got this player (January '03), it was incompatible with my motherboard (MSI Nvidia Nforce with AMD chip) and so I couldn't upload songs to the player. Basically, the player was useless. Sonicblue's support web page was very unhelpful, and tech support was horrendous (they put me on hold forever, were obtuse, and hardly spoke English). They kept having me reinstall (many times) the software that you put on your PC, but it was clear that was not the problem and instead my problem was that the firmware was incompatible with my PC's motherboard. They would have none of it and insisted it was something else. In fact, they even said that even if it was a compatibility problem, this was technically not their fault and they couldn't refund me! Since they don't tell you beforehand what motherboards the player is compatible with, I think that is a horrendous thing to say to a customer. I was very disappointed. Nonetheless, I did what they said (reinstalling the software on my PC a million times) and, needless to say, it didn't work. So I gave up and decided I was just stuck with a piece of junk. Fast forward to several weeks ago (late April '03). I noticed that, finally, a newer version of the firmware was out. Since the player was not working with my motherboard, I used a friend's computer to upgrade the firmware on the S10 (since the player didn't work on my PC, I couldn't even upgrade the firmware on my own computer) from version 1.60 to version 1.80. I thought I'd do it just for kicks, to see if it might work. Amazingly, the new firmware worked and all my problems were solved! My Rio S10 now works perfectly with my motherboard. Though SonicBlue still doesn't publish a list of which motherboards the player is compatible with, I would suspect that they have finally ironed out most compatibility problems with the newest firmware (I just saw that version 1.84 came out last week, or early May). Also, I should mention that the software that comes with the player which you install on your PC (called Rio Music Manager, or just RMM) is pretty lousy. It gets the job done allright, but it's clumsy and if you have any more than a couple dozen mp3's or wma's (I have thousands), it's a major pain to organize them. Once you find the songs you want, uploading them is a breeze; it's just the way RMM organizes them that is terrible. However, you can also use RealPlayer instead of RMM (the appropriate drivers come with the Rio S10). It's somewhat better. So, in conclusion, I would have given the player 5 stars, but the fact that their tech support was terrible and that it took them this long to come out with a fix, forces me to only give the player 4 stars. Had I not gone through the headaches of the past 4 months, the Rio S10 would have gotten 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I got the S10 about a week ago and so far, so good. I took it out of its package, loaded the software, and was on my way. The 64mb of on-board memory is weak but I also got a 256 mb SD card. The size is perfect and the menus work fine for me. Bottom line: about [$$$] (with SD card) for slightly more than five hours of music. Nice product.
Rating:
Summary: Really great..so far....
Review: Bought the S10 for a birthday present for my wife, but I set it up and played with it some. The Rio software loaded without a hitch (this was a sign of good things to come; God help you if you need to use their customer service). It found all the MP3 and WMA songs in the directories I indicated to use. I plugged in the USB cord and the S10, and it recognized it immediately (another good sign). I selected the 9 songs I wanted (it came with 3 preloaded), and transfer took no time at all. I can't stand earbuds, so I'd replace those right away. The RealOne software was a nice added bonus. It sounds pretty good for the price, and the menus for bass/treble, shuffle, clock, stopwatch, and power saver work well enough. The controls are simple and easy to work. The plastic case seems a little fragile; don't drop it too much - keep it in the carrying clip case. The adjustable display tells you everything you need to know. Rio wised up and changed their horribly defective rechargable power pack to a simple AA battery, and eliminated the separate (but similar) AC adaptor and headphone jacks that would destroy the unit when (not IF) the user plugged them in the wrong places.
Rating:
Summary: Pleased
Review: After about an hour trying to install the software and the drivers, it works well. This is my first mp3 player and I am very happy with it. Easy to read, comes with a cute little case and great headphones. The onboard memory only holds 15 songs though, so you might need to buy extra. Overall I'm happy with this.
Rating:
Summary: this is beautiful!!!
Review: This thing is amazing. i just bought it with a 150$ gift certificate and its well worth it. I mean, sure, 64 megs of memory isn't huge, but it still holds a suffient amount of music (about an hour). The sound is clear and the battery life is fantastic (about 20 hours). As for MP3 players like the iPod...ok, if you feel like transfering 400 CDs onto one device, thats the one to use. but if you dont have 500$ or 400 CDs, this the Rio is the one for you!
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