As new (bigger) HDD's become available, will empeg style HDD swaps be feasible ?

Not while maintaining warranty...

I suspect not, given that the plastics are different (0.2" thickness difference) between the 20GB and 40GB. It is unlikely, unless the physical size of the drives match.

Rob said the case was thicker to hold the 40 gig drive.

In theory I guess you could send it back to get it upgraded but I doubt that's really viable. It's going to be difficult doing it yourself as it's not a normal consumer size drive and the back plastic isn't the same as mentioned by others.

Rob said the case was thicker to hold the 40 gig drive.

I was talking about early beta units.

Rob

? I thought the published comparison tables also had the cases with different dimensions to allow for this. Have I misunderstood it?

Not while maintaining warranty...

Quite.

It is unlikely, unless the physical size of the drives match.

Taking Karmas to pieces is definitely not as easy as taking car-players to pieces (at least if you want to put it back together again neatly). But I suspect, if this entirely new drive form factor takes off, bigger capacities in the same physical sizes as the initial 20 and 40 will eventually become available -- much like the way that 2.5in drives used to come in 16.5mm and 12.5mm heights, whereas now even the biggest capacities are 9.5mm. Of course, in that sort of timeframe Rio is hopefully going to have entirely different and even more wonderful players for you to buy...

Peter

And I will be waiting, cash in hand!!!

? I thought the published comparison tables also had the cases with different dimensions to allow for this. Have I misunderstood it?

Paul, I think you and Rob are saying the same thing, you're just saying it different ways, and you're misunderstanding each other's intentions. Something about the phrasing is tripping you up. You started by saying "The cases of the 40's will be bigger" but Rob thought you meant, "The cases of all the units will be bigger to make room for the 40's", even though I know you know better than that.

For everyone else's reference, here is a concise description of the situation as I understand it:

The 20 and 40 karmas will have two different size cases to accommodate two different size drives. Therefore you cannot put a 40 in a 20's case unless they come out with a physically-smaller version of the 40 gig drive in the future.

The beta units to which Rob was referring are 40-gig-size plastic which happens to have a 20-gig drive installed. I'm not sure why they did that for the beta units, but that's the current situation.

Greetings!

Correct. That is the way I understood it. Two different sizes that would go into production in that way. So unless the hypothetical new drive matched the physical drive dimensions in your version of the player, you were out of luck. (Well, you might be able to fit a narrower drive into the player that can support the wider drive, but...)

Oh, and now that I look back on it, Rob was replying to Msaeger, not you, Paul. But I still think that he was saying the right thing, just phrased it a way that sounded like the opposite.