According to best buy, some stores are showing in stock of the Karma now

b

Um, that would be a neat trick!

i was droolin, so i called one of the stores that were showing in stock, and the guy in the computer department said they didnt come in yet, despite what the web site says.
hmm, i wonder if they could be in the back somewhere!
also went to a local best buy here in fla.. just the tag, nothin else.. but i did see the nitrus, and all i gotta say is WOW! that thing is tiny! much smaller than i thought it was, if it was cheaper, id definately buy one. it should be $199 not $299.

b

Just called my local best buy here in houston and they said that they have it in stock, but they can't release it until Tuesday.... interesting...

The web site shows my Best Buy also having it in stock, but the store doesn't actually have it in stock. So apparently the web site's database is not in sync with the store's database.

I broke down and bought a nitrus, 300 is a bit pricey but it is a really cool player. The only questions I have is does it support flac (pointless i know) , is there a voladjust or equivalent, and how to get Rio Music manager to stop crashing when you load a huge directory?

There have been some fun times at Best Buys in the last week with the newly released Canon 300D camera. Lots of reports of people having to force Best Buy employees to search through the stock room (or where ever) to track down newly arrive stock that had "gone missing". Also lots of stores denying having it in stock over the phone, but it being sat on the shelf when people actually take a trip to the store...

how to get Rio Music manager to stop crashing when you load a huge directory?

Don't know what version of RMM you're running, but if it's an older version than the one we're testing for the Karma, it sometimes has the problem of appearing to lock up (no response on screen) even though all it's doing is indexing the disk and taking a long time.

If it's genuinely crashing, it might be because of a corrupt file (or a file with bad or nostandard tag data) somewhere in the directory tree. Try loading only subsets instead of the entire tree and attempt to narrow down, via the divide-and-conquer method, which file is giving it grief. Maybe even save off the offending file so you can show it to the Cambridge guys and they can fix the problem on a future release.

it happens in version 2.10, 2.20, on win2000, 98 . I have tried to add indivudual directories and it seems like after some amount it just doesnt like it and will crash. By crash I mean the program generates an error and then will exit automaitcally. The only way to fix it in win2000 is to edit the registry and remove some of the directories.

Hmm, haven't seen that one, then. How many files are we talking about?

Sounds more like the importer crashing on a file it doesn't like. Unfortunately the only way to track that down is to divide and conquer the media library. If you find the track please let me know and we'll work out what the problem is.

Rob

how about if i have non music files in there like m3u or images, does it ignore non music files?

As in having a built in Rio Taxi system? Yes.

I think he means, does the importer in RMM have problems if you point it to a directory with non-music files.

Eliceo, do you know what Rob and I mean by "divide and conquer"?

I think so. I am also pretty lazy and like most people look for quick fixes. The thought of trying to isolate a particular file or directory sounds pretty time consuming, although I have some idea where to start. I actually started doing this the other day. Unfortuanately on win2000 the program completely exits (only fix is to edit it out of the registry). In Win98 the program will display an error dialog box and then you can still open up options and delete offending directories.

should this problem be in another message thread?

too late to worry about your thread being hijacked.

> As in having a built in Rio Taxi system? Yes.

Can the Karma do the same thing? And if so and you are transferring non-music files, do you need to install any drivers or programs first, or can I just plug the Karma into any random computer and go?

And if so and you are transferring non-music files, do you need to install any drivers or programs first, or can I just plug the Karma into any random computer and go?

To transfer files between the Karma and the computer, you need the Rio Taxi application, which is separate from Rio Music Manager (but is installed at the same time).

If you do not have Rio Music Manager on the aforementioned random computer, but you happen to have ethernet, then you can run the Java version of Rio Music Manager Lite which also includes a Java version of Rio Taxi. These files are available via the web server on the player itself, so you don't need to download any software, it's self-contained.

The only drawback I can see is that, in order to use ethernet, you've gotta have the dock present. There's no ethernet plug on the player, only USB2 on the player. The dock has USB2 and ethernet.

Hopefully some company (or Rio) make a ethernet cable with a plug on the end. Kind of like the USB sync cables you get for a PDA

Ahh, that is too bad. Ok, thanks Tony.

There was discussion of making an ethernet dongle for the player. I can see how that would be a useful thing if you were trying to taxi files to a Mac and didn't want to bring the dock.

But I have to say, the dock is smaller and lighter than the player itself and easy to take with you if you know you're going to need to taxi files to a Mac or a PC without USB. The only time I'd see needing an ethernet dongle is when you're in a place where you need the ethernet connection unexpectedly. But in that case, you wouldn't have the dongle either.

Tony,
Does using the dock for ethernet only (not charging) require the use of a wall wart?

-Zeke

No, the wall wart is not required for the dock to function. But if you don't have the wall wart plugged in, using the dock drains the battery much much faster.

So you can't expect to take the dock to a long download session without the wall wart. But for a quick file transfer, then yeah, I think you can do that.

There's also the slight drawback in that the ethernet appears to operate at sub-megabit speeds..

Cheers

Your presence reminded me: are there non-Windows drivers/utilities for the Karma, et al.? (We need a collective name for them.)

The only non-windows stuff for the Karma right now is Mike Schrag's "Rio Music Manager Lite" and "Rio Taxi Lite". They only work on ethernet.

And to counter Mark's comment about slow ethernet speed: The dot-release that will be available soon, should theoretically improve ethernet speeds quite significatnly. But at the moment, yeah, ethernet is kinda slow (took overnight to fill my player) and USB2 is hella fast (fills the player in a surprisingly short time, IIRC something like an hour or less).

Yup, gotta luv the USB2 -- a song a second download speed (fast!).

>are there non-Windows drivers/utilities for the Karma, et al.?

Nothing that's usable at present. Perhaps soon, though.
I've only had a working Karma for about a week total (since June), so I haven't been able to influence very much about it yet.

Cheers

That's a week more than most of us. Slacker.