Rating: 
Summary: Why not sold by Amazon?
Review: I want to get this as a gift, because iPod is too expensive and my friends all use Windows. But why doesn't Amazon carry this any more? I don't want to go through the third-party stores. Amazon, are you listening?
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding price, great features
Review: I would wholeheartedly concur with the comments in other positive reviews of the Lyra Jukebox. For the money, no other portable MP3 player even comes close.My only suggestions for improvements: 1) Support for 'secure' formats that are being used on the pay per track music download services. 2) Ability to 'cue' multiple albums on the device. The current software allows you to select multiple albums and then play "my selections", but it plays the tracks in - I'm not joking here - alphabetical order across all the albums, as opposed to by album in the order you selected them.
Rating:
Summary: Man, oh Man!!
Review: After reading several reviews of this product - some good and some not so good, I was a little reluctant. I bit the bullet and shelled out $300 or so and was very glad I did. Now, I've only had this for 2 weeks, but this thing has brought me immense joy. I must say that many of the "complaints" I've read have some truth to them, but the way I look at life is this: If I stay at a beautiful hotel with an indoor swimming pool, king size down beds, free room service and a gorgeous ocean side view - I'm not going to complain because I don't like the color of the shower curtain. Get it? The biggest competition, of course, is Apple's IPOD. Yes, it's better, but it's about twice the price. My friend has an IPOD and he tried to talk me into saving for one but he failed. He then conceded that my RCA Lyra was "pretty nice" after I showed it to him. For those who have never seen/held this unit, many complaints are that it's "big and bulky". Horse Hockey. O.K. - compared to the IPOD it is, but that's like saying compared to a Rolls Royce, a Mercedes is a crappy car. This thing fits very snuggly in my shirt pocket, yet this is unnecessary since it comes with a carrying case that allows me to wear it on my belt. Oh, did someone say accessories?? In addition to the carrying case, you get all the equipment to hook it up to your home stereo system and your car stereo (provided you have a cassette deck). The ac adaptor/charger is very lightweight and you can listen via AC power while the unit is recharging. You can also use the thing as a spare hard drive. As far as ease of setup/transfer, I found it to be incredibly easy. If you can transfer a file to a floppy on your computer, you can transfer music easily to this thing. So far I've played MP3, MP3PRO and WMA files - I'm not sure exactly what it will and will not play but the above are good enough for me. I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but to quicken the time it takes the player to get from song to song (rarely longer than 2 seconds for me), you should put your music in as many folders and subfolders as possible - rather than putting your whole collection under one folder. I also like the shuffle feature - mainly because you can shuffle by artist, or folder. So if I'm in a Classical mood, the shuffle will only shuffle music in my classical folder and skip stuff like Aerosmith. The buttons can be a little tricky, and the transfer rate can be slow (at least that's what a lot of people think), but these are very minor in my judgement. My unit freezes about once per day, but a paper clip fixes that very easily (that's the one accessory I had to buy myself! Darn! :-) ) The latest firmware fixes the problem of the unit not remembering where it was when it shut off (another big complaint from people). I did find making the playlists a little tricky, but I found a support group on Yahoo's web site, and I was able to figure it out. If you have tons of cds and want to get them out of your living room and have tons of music at your fingertips, this is the unit for you (I have about 23gb filled - about 7,000 songs). Kudos to RCA!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Read and Think B4U Buy
Review: This is my first mp3 player. My last music machine was a Sony Mini disk player/recorder (which I thought was the cat's meow cause 1 disk holds 5 hours of music.) I did a lot of research and reading and mind changing before I settled on the Lyra2840. It's a sleek, pretty machine, not too big or bulky. The headphones aren't great but they don't suck either, you always replace stock headphones anyway. What I do like:
-It's handy. Not tiny but anything smaller and lighter than a cd player is good.
-All my music at my fingertips
-Very easy to use What I don't like:
-Unlike a MD player, you CANNOT edit songs. ex. with a md, you can combine 2 songs into 1, split one song into 2, change the name or move the song wherever you want on the disk. -You cannot create playlists on the go. I have 2800 songs on mine and I basically just listen to one artist at a time, I have too much to play on shuffle -One way i try to create a playlist is to pick a genre and shuffle within that Ex. I'll choose funk and wanna hear everything but the machine will only play 1 artist at a time so if you have 5 Parliament albums you'll hear them all b4 you get to Prince. -I have a genre I created called Brain Music which is baroque as well as language instruction on the lyra. There is no way, if you're in shuffle mode, to exclude these categories. If you shuffle all playable music, everything will play, which stinks. -Freezing is a problem. I tried to be patient, to give the unit one command at a time but still it freezes at odd times and I've taken to carrying a paper clip with me for fast resetting.
-I loved the idea os iTunes but the Lyra doesn't play mpeg4's which is the format iTunes are in (maybe i'm just a tech retard cause there's a way to convert I just don't know about) I think some more reasearch and evolution need to happen for me to buy and appreciate an mp3 player (I don't know anyone with another system so I have no hands-on basis for comparison) Basically, the best reason to buy this machine is to have an entire library at hand but if you're looking for flexibility, a MD player is the way to go.
Rating:
Summary: Recent software update fixed problems!
Review: In late October RCA released a software update for the RD2840 that fixed two problems: 1. the RD2840 can remember where it left off before shutdown, so when you turn it on, it goes right back to the last song played -- and the start-up time has been significantly shortened. 2. it no longer crashes when playing certain (ill-ripped?) MP3 songs. I maintain my "5-star" rating because it's been such a joy to use. I still envy iPod's nice form factor a bit, but for my money, I got a player that gives very good sound, plays MP3/MP3Pro/WMA, the most popular compressed audio formats in the world, and doubles as a USB 2.0 High Speed external hard drive with plug-and-play when you use it with Windows XP and Windows 2000. Dude, you can't beat this deal! The software update now makes the player "perfect" in function.
Rating:
Summary: Great piece of equipment!
Review: I just purchased this and I absolutely love it. After having read various other reviews on how it freezes up or how it doesnt go to the last song played, I was a little skeptical on buying it, but I went ahead and bought it and I don't regret it at all. Adding files is as simple as clicking and dragging from Windows Explorer, I didn't have much music on my desktop so I added bits and pieces at a time and I feel that it transfers pretty quick. It has many ways of viewing the music, and through MusicMatch Jukebox you can create playlists and add those playlists to the device with no problem. Also, the like and dislike option on the device add ways to create mini playlists on the device itself. As for the complaints of it not remembering the last song played, I have found that the scroll buttons are pretty quick and the only time I like to hear the last song played is when I have a playlist going and the playlists are easy to get to quickly. I had looked into the IPOD and while this is a bit bigger, it offers the same capabilities and is just as easy to use, and for the price, it is worth it! Complaints about the headphones can be easily solved by buying a new pair, I happen to like them, so that was not a problem. The carrying case is also great, it has quite a bit of padding, so for clumsy people like me you don't need to worry about it getting scratched up unless you drop it without the case on. Even with the case on, you have access to all the buttons, with the exception of the reset button, which is good, because I probably would hit it on accident somehow. Overall, I recommend this to music lovers, especially those who cannot afford to shell out the extra $200 for an IPOD.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Ready for Prime Time
Review: I am a pretty avid music listener (22GB CD library) but not an audio snob so my comments are from a practical side only. This player is a piece of crap. I constantly had problems with it locking up. It is also very sensitive to the initializing process when you make any changes. Never did get it to work with MMJB. Manuvering through the menu's was not intuititive. I took it back after 3 days and got the iPod. Now there's a fine piece of equipment. Face it.. this is a luxury item. If you can't afford $500 for and iPod, you probably can't affort $300 for the Lyra. Put out the extra $200 and get the iPOD. I promise you won't regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: One of your best bets for a hard drive mp3 player
Review: The RD2840 has a lot going for it. First of all, the size/price ratio is outstanding. 40gb for this price is likely the best you'll find, by far. Secondly, and a huge benefit, is the fact that this player is plug-and-play, it shows up on your desktop as a portable hard drive, and you can transfer music (and files) through windows explorer. You don't need to use buggy proprietary software to transfer music. Not only does this make it easy to transfer music, but it's a cinch to connect it to multiple computers to play and move around music. Most other players of this sort make you use software and many have DRM limitations. Not here. If you want to bring it to work or to a friends, no problem. The player does include a handy tray app which you can install to sync your player or add firmware updates, but it's not necessary. The included case fits perfectly, is sturdy, and lets you access all buttons on the machine (except the reset button). It's not as small as the Ipod, but not huge either. The user interface is OK but has some problems. You can navigate by the usual title/artist/album/genre/year. It reads all your tags and plays songs in album order. You can also choose to navigate by folder structure, which is a nice touch. The main problem I have is with the "shuffle" feature. It tends to play songs in the same order of "shuffle" every time, unless you repeatedly restart the feature, and plays the first song in the playlist far too often. The new "resume" feature added to the firmware somewhat addresses this problem. However, the resume feature is buggy also and does not remember where in the song you were. I wish there was a better-implemented shuffle/random and resume function. There are relatively few options for playback modes and backlight options also. All in all, I think the combination of price, size, the no-software-no-DRM factor, and decent usability makes this a winner in the current crop. The new iRiver models show promise also, and their firmware tends to be fantastic, but they're far pricier and not yet available in more than 20gb. In a couple of years we'll probably have the perfect iRiver player...until then this is the best choice. That the players from Napster, Creative et al are getting so much press while this is all but ignored is a bit baffling. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Some problems
Review: First of all, I had trouble installing the player on my desktop, which has Windows ME. It was easier on the laptop, with Windows XP. This requires an extra step for transferring files, since all my music is on the desktop. Second, while some people are complaining that it doesn't remember the last song played, I don't care about that. The RealOne player on my computer doesn't even do that. But the RealOne player does have a variety of options for listing songs, including by file name. I sometimes put numbers into file names, so they'll play in the order I want without making a playlist. I would like it if the Lyra player could list files this way. Otherwise, it's working well for me so far. It's only been three days, and I have nothing to compare it to. But I am mostly satisfied.
Rating: 
Summary: The size does count...
Review: I bought this instead of the iPod because I couldn't bare the price Apple wanted. I brought it home and opened the box. I was amazed at its girth and probable ability to beat me in a fight, but liked the look of it nevertheless. I enjoyed the accessories that came with it, and most importantly appreciated the price. The headphones took some getting used to and I never really like them but I learned to deal with it. I plugged it into an open USB port on my PC (real easy) and suffered through perhaps an hour or two while it transfered my miniscule 5GB of mp3s. I then remembered I had forgotten an album, and started up the process again. I rejoiced to see that instead of taking two hours this time, it only took around 30 or 45 min. I brought it to the gym the next day, where I made the mistake of trying to run with it. It not only fell off, but weighed down my pants enough to give those around me that good old locker-room feeling. I found it to be too slow to be convenient, and too large to fit in my pocket. Also, I had some problems when the Lyra deemed it necessary to display unintelligable characters for a few mp3s with valid ID3 tags and later freeze. This became so frequent that I had to bring a safety pin (to hit the convenient reset button) with me whenever I wanted to listen to music. My main point is that there is a good reason that this piece is such a good deal... I traded it back in a few weeks later for the iPod 15GB and have enjoyed it very much since.
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