0.2 inches is really hard to tell!!! I can easily see the issue of having everything be off by a tiny fraction - warehousing, shipping, customer support. Scary proposition.

Maybe it was to help prevent sticking a 40gig drive into a 20gig

It sounds like quite a bit to me isn't that about the thickness of 3 quarters. I don't know if it's enough to go through the trouble of making two of everything though.

It only affects the back cover. Each iPod is a different thickness also.

Rob

The 40g price of $499 is fine with me. I have 35g of music on my riocar, this product will be perfect for me.

How do folks feel about the pricing, based on the specs given on that page?

I'm intruiged to know how well the Nitrus will sell. I can't help but feel that $300 is too much for 1.5GB, even though it is has a great form factor and feature set.
The flip side is that if Rio keep updating it with bigger drives as they become available, and the typical discounting occurs, then I could see 5GB at ~$200 in that form factor being compelling for daily runners. I wonder if the Nitrus might outsell the Karma if that happens.

I can't help but feel that $300 is too much for 1.5GB, even though it is has a great form factor and feature set.

Yeah, considering that's the price of the 10gb iPod.

I mean, yeah, form factor, apples and orange (pun intended), but still.

Matching iPod price but beating iPod capacity for the 20 and 40 is a good move. Especially considering that the street prices of the Rio units will be even lower. But yeah, I'm not clear on $300.00 for the 1.5gb version when you can get the iPod 10 for that price.

FWIW,
the ex-Forrester Research guy quoted in this article seems to think the Nitrus will do well against the low-end iPod. Maybe he's figuring 10GB is way more than these buyers need anyway, so it will come down to ... {dramatic pause} ... form factor and battery life.

Maybe he's figuring 10GB is way more than these buyers need anyway, so it will come down to ... {dramatic pause} ... form factor and battery life.

Actually, I would have to agree with that line of thinking simply based on the fact that 10GB for me is not enough for all of my mp3's and since I own a Rio central as well as an empeg I really have no reason even for the 40gig Karma. I need something SMALL with a long battery life that can hold enough music to get the yardwork done (and the rio 800 is not quite big enough even with the 32MB back pack with the 128MB). So I would probably be more inclined to buy the Nitrus then Karma or ipod based on form factor and battery life. But ONLY if it'll download directly from the Rio Central or the empeg.... if it won't do that then I'll just stick with the 800.

Well, you'd be very pleased with Nitrus. Getting an early preview of it, I can tell you it's very small, amazingly thin, light as a feather, has fantastic battery life and looks great! I think most people would find about a 400 song capacity more than sufficient. I can't even feel it in my pocket when I'm out. Pretty sure it's lighterthan my S35 and certainly much thinner.

Plus, it can sort by ID3 tags, create playlists and has a file taxi. So, not Karma, but still very feature rich. Great sound, too!

I think it's Rio's dark horse and will become it's surprise hit!

Rory

Anonymous
(Unregistered)
13/08/03 02:29 AM

???

Edit: Oh, I get it... People can post anonymous on this particular forum. Tom, is that the desired effect?

Edit: Oh, I get it... People can post anonymous on this particular forum. Tom, is that the desired effect?

I'm guessing NOT. It's a setting you have to apply after-the-fact, after creating the forum, and Tom must have missed it. I'm going to set it properly and if he really MEANT to have anonymous posters, he can set it back later.

Yeah, he was one row off when he selected "Read Only" for the "Guests" group. He inadvertently set this forum to "Read Only" for empeg employees.

Oops. I created this area before rushing off to work Monday, and must have seen the grid wrong. Yes, I did not want anonymous posting enabled. Thanks for catching that Tony.

Last post from Colorado for a bit. Heading on the road to Quakecon in 7 hours. Don't mess up the place too much while I am gone :-)

It's not a matter of "I mean, yeah, form factor", but rather "Form factor!".

The form factor is pretty much the defining characteristic of the Nitrus. A lot of Karma features are not present on the Nitrus because they simply won't fit.

To my surprise, having something this light and portable, but still able to hold a reasonable number of tunes (i.e. enough to keep you going for a whole day) is very appealing. Especially if your normal mode of listening to your collection is "Shuffle the whole damn lot, and then I'll skip any I don't like". For me that's true about 95% of the time.

And Rio Music Manager does a reasonable job of automatically rotating the material, so you don't get have to manually swap things around when you get sick of what's currently on your player. (Obviously extra capacity and processing power would be nice, but as my grandmother used to say "You can't make a cake without breaking a few legs" (sic) .)

So at the moment I'm in a bit of an unexpected quandry as to whether I want to buy a Karma or not, because I really like the ultraportability of the Nitrus.

Richard.

I agree that the form factor of Nitrus is very compelling. It would probably be my player of choice to take on a trip involving public transport.

Rob