Rating: 
Summary: HELP!
Review: I hate to make this into a "help me" page but this is kinda an emergency. After two months of good usage, I keep getting a "Failed to load files! Reset unit to resume operation.Update lyrahd system files if problem persists" after it stays on the "RCA Lyra" boot screen for about 10 seconds.I can't update the system files b/c the lyra can't boot fully, meaning the computer can't recognize it when its connected. Also, resetting it using the little hole doesn't help either--it just turns it back on/off. A dumb girl needs help, if you could take 10 seconds to email the response at alexpais@yahoo.com . thanks in advance.
Rating: 
Summary: RCA Vs. Creative...
Review: I've only had my RCA for about a week and a day, and it works great! I'm mean way better than my Creative Nomad thing I had. I haven't had any troubles at all yet, and i have over 1,000 songs already on it. I love it! and it holds more songs, plus data. Witch is good for me because i'm writing poems and songs and stuff so i can save it on here. I recomend you buy this product, It's well worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: if there was an option of negative stars i would give it
Review: this is one of the worst player on the market. after using this product, which i used it only to avoid the cost of ipod, but i learned the hard way that its better to pay a bit more for a working player. the button/navi stick in the middle is ridiculous. ive read others complaining about it, i have to use my nails to lift the button to go the opposite way. any body praising this player has to be one of the following 1. employee of rca paid to rig the reviews 2. technologically deficient people that cannot tell between volume bttons to a power button. when navigating in the folders and songs, this brick responds so slowly. it really does take 5 min to move between songs. any normal human being would not be able to succeed testing one's patience with this junk. when going through the songs under "all songs" option, it does not remember the place where you lastly left off, so after playing a song, has to go back up to the list. this may be fine when you have 2 songs, but not when you have more than that. lastly, the size of this thing is enormous. who ever said that they can put this thing in their pocket must wear those ridiculous pants with pockets down to their ankles. instat you get this brick, you will be ostrized about its size. my friend who also has this thing got a hand bag just for this monster. heavy as hell, battery sucks, and nothing good can be written about this product. if the world was run by me, i would bankrupt RCA, take back every single one of their product and burn them. im sure there will be agonized demonic souls coming out from these things as they are burned. NEVER BUYING ANY PRODUCT FROM RCA EVER AGAIN. update: i bought an ipod, and there is a reason that it is much more expensive. it works. oh and the lyra...? i chucked it against the brick wall which it belongs. and i took a hammer to it afterwards... dun follow my foot steps of buying one in the first place. but let me assure you, smashing it to pieces was the best part of the purchasing the lyra. i hope no one buys lyra or any other rca product so that the company can be bankrupt so that no one has to suffer from their products ever again.
Rating:
Summary: Far too many bugs to be worth your time.
Review: When I first received my RD2840 I spent nearly one week configuring it and loading all 37 gigs of mp3's, only to find out it was defective. It took roughly 5 weeks to receive a replacement, which, now "plays" mp3's, but not without it's problems. Luckily, the freezing mentioned in many of the other reviews has been corrected by RCA's firmware updates. It is one of the few positives (or neutrals) I have about this player. My main complaint is the random feature, which is absolute garbage. My friends could have coded a routine with Pascal back in junior high better than this. Here is the situation: I have over 37 gigs of mp3's on my player. (6798 mp3's for example) Every three or four "truly random" songs, the player will revert to the same songs (Starting with either song 1 or 6798, if it "chooses" 1 it will repeat it until you stop the player.) in the same order for no reason. (This bug is signalled by a large burst of noise in one of the channels.) At this point you must stop the player reload the "All songs" playlist and choose something else. If they can't find, or won't allow, anyone on staff to code something better than this, it merely illuminates the rest of the problems in an even more pitiful light. (Speaking of noise, quite often one of the channels will distort slightly, but enough to notice. It is not the mp3 or the headphones as I have tested them both on many other sources.) The screen and display are positive features which barely redeem the atrocious buttons, which happen to feel as though they will last about one more month. Whatever engineer made the decision to use them must be either fired or a relative of one of the RCA management team. One other problem is if you have in ear plug phones,(Shure's for example) there is a large difference in volume: 0 = off, 1 (Out of about 25) = to what level 8 was on my previous player. (the e.digital Treo 15.) In a sense, the volume is either off or on if you are using this style of phones. If you don't need the extra 20 gigs, track down a Gateway DMP-X20. (Made by e.digital) These are reported to be far more stable. Besides a few minor bugs their early model the treo 15 was a fantastic purchase. In fact, I spent nearly 6 months calling warehouses and the manufacturer looking, to no avail, for an odyssey 40 gig (e.digital), before settling on this paperweight (RCA RD2840). If you need the extra space and can't afford an I-Pod, (Which are not that great either.) my recommendation would be to wait with your discman, and see what is released next year.
Rating:
Summary: Lyra vs. Zen vs. iPod: A 40GB MP3 Player Guide
Review: I've owned all three 40GB players available today: Creative Zen, RCA Lyra, Apple iPod. This is the review I wish I had read before I started shopping. It was a originally more comprehensive but I had to trim it to 1000 words. For the most part, the Creative Zen has the best features of the three, as well as the best price. It sounds like a no brainer except for the fact that these things break like crazy! If you read some of the other reviews on here, you'll see a few people mention that their headphone jack shorted out when they dropped the player....well mine shorted out while the player was sitting on my desk not moving at all. I don't know a single person who bought one of these players and didn't have their headphone jack malfunction! Many reviewers suggest buying an extended warranty because of this problem. I would most definitely agree with them on that one, but personally I don't have the patience to wait a few weeks every time the player decides to stop working. Those warrantees are supposed to be purchased just in case something goes wrong; not because something most likely will! The Lyra from the moment it came out of the box to the moment it stopped working for no apparent reason, four hours later, was on the whole a piece of junk. That said...on to the comparisons. PRICE: As just about every anti-iPod reviewer mentions, THE IPOD IS MORE EXPENSIVE AND DOES PRETTY MUCH THE SAME THING. The iPod is basically the BMW of mp3 players...the other mp3 player work like, and cost about as much as a Kia. They all do basically the same thing, but the cheaper ones are cheaper for a reason! SIZE: All three players are smaller than a walkman, so it's kind of silly to even discuss this, but it seems to be a hot topic in the other reviews. From largest to smallest the players are ranked as follows: Lyra, Zen, iPod. The Lyra is the only one of the three which will not fit easily in your pocket. It is the widest /longest /heaviest of the bunch, and personally, I hated the way it felt in my hand. The Zen and the iPod were both a pleasure to hold. CONTROLS/NAVIGATION: iPod gets first place here simple because it's touch sensitive navigation wheel allows you to get from the first album in your collection to the last in seconds and it stops on a dime anywhere in between. The Zen's controls are very good however it takes longer to scroll through your entire collection and when it really starts moving fast, it continues scrolling after you release the button sometimes skipping past another 50-75 albums! The Lyra had decent navigation, but the buttons had to be pushed more than once before they responded almost half of the time! The Zen and the iPod can be operated easily with one hand. PLAYLISTS/SONG RATING: The Zen wins here without a doubt. It is the only one of the three where you can create, edit (even while it's playing) and SAVE multiple play lists on the player itself without connecting it to a computer. The iPod allows you to make ONE play list on the fly, which cannot be edited or saved.
The Lyra allows you to tag songs you like or don't like and it makes play lists of each...yes, it makes a playlist of songs that you tell it you DO NOT LIKE...if that doesn't explain what's wrong with this product, nothing will! The iPod allows you to rate songs 1-5 stars on the player, and then make a play list automatically based on those ratings when connected to a computer.
BATTERY: Again, Zen is the winner here. Not only does it offer a battery that lasts 14 hours instead of iPod and Lyra's 8 hour batt. it is also the only player of the three where you can remove and replace the battery when it deteriorates with age as all rechargeables do. It should be noted that the battery times I listed are the official times given by the manufacturers. The Zen actually lasts about 10 hours the other two go between 5 and 6 before needing a charge. SCREEN: The Zen not only has the biggest screen of the bunch, it also scrolls the album title in the directory screen allowing you to see the whole thing instead of just the first few words. TRANSFER TO PLAYER: All three units use USB 2.0, the iPod also can be used with Firewire. TRANSFER FROM PLAYER: The Zen allows you to transfer music freely from your player to any computer loaded with it's software. The iPod does not allow this however third party software that can be purchased and used to pull songs from the iPod. In all honest, the Lyra broke before I could find out if you can pull songs off of it. </P> SOFTWARE: iTunes is easy to use and offers tons of ways to organize your music. Creative Media Manager takes a lot of getting used to but is decent once you figure it out. Musicmatch, which comes with the Lyra is garbage. It's slow, difficult to figure out at times, and constantly badgers you to buy the upgrade to its premium version. EXTRAS: The only one that actually has extra features is the iPod which comes loaded with 4 different games, the ability to read text documents that are stored on the hard drive on the player's screen, a date book, and an address book. The Lyra's ONLY advantage over the other players is the fact that it comes with a complete car kit (charger/tape adapter)....which is pretty nice, but useless when the player turns itself into a paperweight after just a few hours. All three players come with a case....iPod's is the only one which does not give you access to the player's controls when it's in the case.
Hope this helped.
Rating:
Summary: RCA normal junk
Review: This rca was bought in late December and after charging the unit for 1 day and it never indicated that it was charged. The next week the case started to swell and would only operate for 2 to 3 hours between charges. At 60 days the hard drive started to fail and at 93 days it quit. RCA customer service does not have 800 number to use for service help. This item was returned to store we purchased it at and it is our last RCA we will purchase.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice, but has some rather sad flaws
Review: Okay, I've had this for a little over a month now. It's a nice & good-looking device, and feels solid within its case. It does fit plenty of music in it, and all that others said, for a nice price.
The sound quality is really good, even with the thick looking earphones included, and it plays well both in the home stereo and in the car.
File transfer is indeed fast, and it profiles (sorts itself out) in less than 5 minutes. The battery has been behaving okay so far.
It does what you expect from it... sort of.
It's somewhat slow. It sometimes takes almost 5 seconds to start a new song if you try to skip one, and ~15 seconds to go to the music list if you're using the "all songs" menu. I guess that's how it works. But the main disappointing feature of it is the "smart shuffle" thing... Since it won't remember where it stopped, it'll bother you by playing the songs in the very same order once you re-start it. If you start it from another song, it'll go back to the first or last songs in the list (which turn out to be its obvious favorites, playing every 8 songs or so), then maybe go through the same old sequence again for another couple of songs, even though there's another thousand songs for it to choose from.
This annoys me because I don't really listen to music for hours in a row, so when I am confronted with the same sequence every morning in the car... it can be pretty frustrating.
This is my first jukebox, but I've kept it updated with their website. I wonder it any other devices behave this way as well.
ps. Be careful with it, even when it is in its case. The screen still gets scratched easily.
Rating:
Summary: RCA Lyra 40GB
Review: This is a very good jukebox with sufficient features. The only set-back is that it is impossible to take songs from a cd because it does not support the wave format. None the less, it is still a keeper and I will have it until it breaks.
Rating:
Summary: RCA, Good.
Review: I like the ability to hold a large amount of music for less than the competitor, and still have good quality. The RCA brings it. Many people experience that it will pause, and they have to wait a long time for the battery to die before they can have any function out of the player. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO, is get a needle, and on the left side of your MP3 player, there is a small hole, insert the needle, and it will reset itself. Very easy. Other than that, no problems what so ever. Great product!
Rating: 
Summary: I have problems with it
Review: Ok, so the interface isn't great and the buttons don't work all that well (not that I had significant problems with them). My real problem came when I actually tried to listen to music on it. The player has frozen on me twice now. Once it is frozen, short of voiding the warranty, opening the case and removing the battery, there is no way to turn it off and get it working again. you have to wait 10 hours or so for the battery to die and then recharge it. Obviously this is unacceptable. When it is working, i don't have any real problems with it.
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