Rating: 
Summary: Still Not Enough Space!
Review: As you may surmise from my email address, I know and care a thing or two about mp3s and their future. Unfortunately for anyone who bought one, Diamond Rio is not in that future. Granted, this 64mb unit (upgrade to 96 for a hefty charge) is an improvement over the impotent 32mb original. But if you care at all about the quality of the music you listen to, and if you also like the idea of listening to a lot of DIFFERENT music when you're out and about, then DON'T BUY THE RIO! The mp3s I encode are ripped at a bitrate of either 160 or 192kbps depending on the contents of the song. At that you could only fit about 12 songs onto this guy (if you're lucky). What a waste! There is a cd-mp3 player (which interestingly amazon does not offer...) which allows you 10 times the capacity (and with 40 sec esp there is not much chance of skipping). Also, down the road a few months there will be a player with a 4GB+ capacity! I don't know the specifics of this technology, but I am willing to wait for that and let Diamond Multimedia go back to making killer graphics cards -- something that they are actually good at.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Player that's Easy to Use
Review: I've had my Rio for almost a year now, and it goes everywhere with me. I have had very few problems with it. The sound is not always perfect, but errors are few and easy enough to tune out. I have an expansion card for it, which doubles the memory, but since I've had it, the player has started to "skip" (that is, every time a certain song is played, it leaves out a second). It's a great player for running and hiking, though, because dropping and bouncing it do no damage. That's what I use it for the most, and I find it to be a far better option than a skipping CD player or a cassette player. The earphones are useable, and in fact are ideal for the activities mentioned above. The device can also be hooked up to speakers through the earphone jack. MusicMatch Jukebox is the included recording software. It creates quality mp3s, but may not work well on older computers or with additional programs open. The Rio Manager software used to download to the player (which uses an EASY parallel port connection) is self-explanatory and also serves as a music player on your PC. I've tried playing music through RealPlayer, MusicMatch, and Napster as well, and in my opinion, this is the best software. My complaints: there's no radio tuner, and the player cannot be hooked up to an AC adapter. Being an environmentally-conscious person, this bothers me. Also, see complaints about batteries in Michael Slabodnick's review. Otherwise, it's a great piece of technology with a lot of possibilities.
Rating: 
Summary: I love it, but...
Review: I have one of these, and I'm very fond of it. It does a good job, and is very durable (I've had mine for years and haven't been incredibly kind to it, but it's still good as new.) The design is plain but classy, and it's easy to use. It takes almost no time to familiarize yourself with the buttons so you can fool with it without looking. There aren't any buttons or switches that are easy to hit accidentally, and in general, it can take being tossed around a little in a bag so long as it's reasonable. Don't crush it and don't spill anything on it, but it's not like it's the Mona Lisa. As many have mentioned, it holds about 30 minutes of music, unless you can find a memory card (I'm not sure if they are even made anymore, but I have seen them for sale) which will give you a whopping hour. If you're just going to use this for walking the dog around the block, or standing in line, or a quick run in the morning, this isn't such a big deal. The USB-type cord is primitive and weird, so you'll probably be using the parallel port adapter, which isn't really a problem, but can be an inconvenience if you have a lot of things that use your parallel ports. I'm pretty sure the company no longer supports this device or its software, since they have gone on to bigger and better things since its debut. Caveat emptor. Also, it is not compatible with anything after Windows 98, but you can get around that easily by downloading the free program "Dreaming of Brazil" which works with XP, NT, and 2000. (Google search for "Diamond Rio mp3 player" or "Dreaming of Brazil.") A few pointers from my humble experience with the Rio PMP300:
If the headphones it comes with break, you can replace them with any headphones that fit the headphone jack. You should also take the battery out of the Rio when you aren't using it-- it sucks energy when it's idle. If you happen to need a little bit of misc. storage space, you can use the Dreaming of Brazil program to transfer any items that will fit, which can be handy. I imagine this is not the best mp3 player you can buy, but if you can get it cheap, it's still a pretty good one. The main problem I have is the tiny amount of storage space and compatibility issues. Shop around for an iPod or a newer Rio or something if you're very concerned with absolute top quality.
Rating:
Summary: the RIO is way cool...
Review: I think this is a wonderful product. I purchased the SE (64 meg) and have not experienced the problems mentioned in previous reviews. Downloads taking too long? Try closing other applications and freeing up some resources -- mine takes about 30 seconds for a 4 minute song. Music isn't loud enough? Try using other headphones -- I keep the volume between "5" and "8" while running and it's plenty loud. All I years? Since when has *any* of the cool, new stuff been available for the Mac? "Thinking differently" has its drawbacks guys! ;-) And finally don't even try to weigh it against the Minidisc, it's like comparing apples and oranges. If you're only curious about the RIO, the one sold here with is a great deal after the $50 rebate. If you know you'll want to store gobs of music and upgrade later, go ahead and spring for the SE... You won't be disappointed
Rating:
Summary: Great technology, needs better implementation
Review: Almost there... Although the Rio series from Diamond are a refreshing and commendable technology advance, even if not the first, I am holding out for the Nomad by Creative Labs for its recording capability and FM tuner. For a game designer who wants to record high quality sounds out in the field, this is a cool device. The issue here still seems to be the high cost of FLASH memory. It is amazing to me why nobody has made an MP3 player that utilizes zip, super disks or even the smallish Clik! disks from Iomega. At least this way, you wouldn't need specialized 'cradles' to bring music back and forth, and you could always carry MP3's on disk with you for long trips. There could always be internal memory to hold songs (for skip free playback) but I would think that this skip free requirement wouldn't be needed all the time. In any case, I am sure innovation will occur. Another thing I'd like to see....a REMOVABLE MEDIA based MP3 player for my car or home, based off a JAZ 2 or CD, with an internal hard drive. This would be pretty killer. The idea of sticking a single JAZ 2 in my car audio device and listening to MP3's encoded at 128 is pretty amazing. It also seems a JAZ 2 would be more reliable and less skip prone than a CD. In any event, I expect RAM will be coming way down in price and we can just use non volatile RAM for our music, even to the point of having gigs of storage. Why doesn't AMAZON have the NOMAD player?
Rating:
Summary: I love my Rio PMP300
Review: I got the PMP300 as a birthday present, and I love it. I am a college student, and i already have a huge MP3 library on my desktop. I also discovered that more than half my MP3s are encoded at 64 kbps, so I can fit a little over an hour of my favorites on it and take it with me to (boring) lectures, the library, or to work out. This BS about only fitting 30 minutes of music is because the encoding is at CD-quality...I've never noticed a difference. With the rebates, it is almost as inexpensive as a Sport Discman, but gets better battery life, weighs less, and i can listen to what I want without switching CDs (as if I could carry more than one CD when i'm jogging anyways). I am definitely a computer geek, so I wasn't worried about setting it up...but the setup was so simple a 5 year old could do it. Looking forward to taking it on long bus rides to crew races this spring. Great little player for the money.
Rating:
Summary: A mindisc fan gets Rio
Review: I am an ardent MD fan. I bought the Diamond Rio because of the price. I love gadgets. I use it for exercise (even skip protection on MD and CD players sometimes is not perfect)...it does NOT skip, period. Holds about 50 minutes of good quality music. Construction quality ok (although I would get a headphone or headphone adapter with a right angle plug). Easy to play. Good on batteries (1AA alkaline). Problems? Yes. The software comes with basically two programs, the RIO Manager: used to load Rio from computer. Easy. Drag and Drop items from Windows Explorer. Very easy and painless. No problems with RIO Manager. The other software, for getting music from CD stinks. Search the internet for freeware, and you will find some jewels. You need need software to convert .wav to .mp3 and .mp3 to .wav. It does NOT come with this conversion software. The RIO has three "speeds". If you do not use the right "speed", or bitrate, the sound will be off speed (like playing a 33 record on a 45 turntable). So you need to be flexible. The second problem is the parallel port adapter. Some devices AFTER the plug adapter (it goes inline with cables, and has a cable that plugs into the side of it) do not work. Major pain. Just my printer and the adapter are fine. But throw in my scanner, and boom, the scanner don't work. Anyway, the fix was not a port sharing device, nothing worked. The solution is another parallel port card (for lpt2). Cheap, and protects computer from plugging and unplugging the Rio. Those are the ONLY two "problems". Easily fixed, and worth it to get the Rio. For the price, it is GREAT. You need good headphones. With good headphones at 128kbps you get very near CD sound. NOT as good as minidisc. But ok. the medium RIO speed 80kbps is ok (it depends on the encoding software you use). The "equalization" of the RIO his four modes: NORMAL, CLASIC, JAZZ, and ROCK. This thing has the best type of digital sound shaping I have heard. Sounds good! Controls are Volume, Play/Pause, forward search/skip, reverse search/skip, stop, Random, repeat (all or song), A-B, and HOLD (locks buttons). I am very happy with the Rio. I will get extra memory soon. I will say it is not as flexible as minidisc. With MD you use a 74 minute replacable disk. You can buy MANY MANY MD's for the price of 32mb memory for RIO. But Rio has it's place. In my pocket when I exercise!
Rating: 
Summary: The Diamond Rio PMP300
Review: Think about this...[quite a bit of money] for a mp3 player that holds max. 9-10 songs. That is the most rediculous thing i have ever heard. You can get a Nomad II for [less money]with 64mb built in. I recommend getting that mp3 player. I just bought a 128mb card for the PMP300 and it doesn't work. This Mp3 Player only takes certain 32 mb cards which are [quite expensive]. When i drop the mp3 player it shuts off completely as if there was no battery in the device. Alot of times when you take the battery out and then put it back in it doesn't even register as having a battery in it. It is not a high technology device at all. Something else that made me even more mad was that there is no longer customer support for this product. I think this company should get their act together. I highly recomend buying another mp3 player b/c this one isn't worth it at all.
Rating: 
Summary: rio mp3 player pmp300
Review: i brought my pmp300 brand new but moved some time ago and have not been able to find the download cables it is a great mp3 player but i am getting bored with the same mucis thats on the player if you have one for gods sake DONT LOSE YOU DOWNLOAD CABLES because you can not get them for love nor money
Rating:
Summary: Piece of [junk] if you ask me..
Review: I loved this Rio when I first got it, honest I did. I took great care of it, was careful not to drop it, fed it fresh batteries every time it asked, and all was well. But then, after about a year, my Rio failed me. The battery compartment flap came loose and refused to stay closed. I tried taping it shut, but as I usually clipped the Rio to my pocket, gravity worked against me to keep the battery continually falling out of the bottom. Every time I so much as shifted in my chair, the song would restart because the battery had gotten loose and caused the Rio to power off. What's worse is that SonicBlue blatantly refused to replace the player even though it was clearly a product defect and though I had a warranty. Their reason is that this product is a "legacy" product now..so even though they're apparently still manufacturing this thing, they won't do anything to fix it. I'm never buying from them again.
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