[mattmarshall]

hey all.....

i'm looking to get a small mp3 player for my little brother. he's 11, and will use it while playing basketball, and just sittiing around the house.

i want to get him 64 megs. the thing is, every mp3 player i look at requires batteries--i want one that is re-chargeable. he can't be buying batteries every week,,,,

any ideas? i'm looking in the 150 dollar range. oh, and it must work with os X


thanks!


-matt

[Max8319]

http://www.sonicblue.com/audio/rio/portables.asp

well none of the low end models has rechargable battery, but look good otherwise.

the rio one has 32 mb (get a memory card) and it'll PROBABLY add up to 150-200 (i didn't check prices). the rio one is their lowest model so that's the area you should look at.

i'm not sure abou osx compatability. check the requirements page.

[slo-mo]

Check out this one, (edit: wrong link!) [URL=http://www.americas.creative.com/products/category.asp?Category=2&MainCategory=2[/URL] The Nomad II is great, costs $130, you can buy a docking station for it to recharge it, don't know the price of that though.

Hope I helped.

[ 01-12-2002: Message edited by: slo-mo ]

[kjb]

I -just- got the RioONE last night for my birthday. iTunes recognizes it with no problem and adding songs to it are super easy...BUT, every time I disconnect it from my Mac, I get the spinning rainbow wheel from hell, and it never goes away. Complete system hang. Mouse still responds, but I can't switch apps or even bring up the force quit dialogue. I even let it "work" overnight and it was still there this morning, after eight or so hours.

I'm going to do a bit more research, but if I can't solve the problem by this afternoon, it's going back for the Nike psa[play 60. I bought that Mp3 player for my brother in law at Christmas, and it works flawlessly w/ iTunes.

Kevin

[mattmarshall]

i don't understand all these rios.....they make great machines, and then don't put a re-chargeable battery in it......

who would go out and buy a new pack of batteries every week?
if something i'm looking at doesn't have a re-chargeable, i scratch it off my list.

[TheMosco]

if batteries are such a problem, you can just go out and buy some Ni-Mh rechargable batteries.

Rio has some good stuff. I had the rio 500 (now have ipod) and it was very durable. Have dropped it many times. I don't how the rio 600 and 800 are. The one bad thing about the rio 600 and 800 is that they require you to buy memory backpacks from them that are more expensive than memory cards.

[kjb]

Just an update to my earlier post. The "freezing" problem is only in OS X. The Rio ONE works perferctly in OS 9.

So much for the world's most advanced operating system.

Kevin

[Max8319]

OR

so much for rio's bad drivers (assuming they use them)

[kjb]

True, true. But, in the iTunes 2.0.3 readme, it says something to the effect of "this update adds support for the Rio ONE as well as..." I can't think why it would work perfectly in OS 9, but goof all up in OS X. Apple's support forums are down right now, so I'll have to wait a while to figure out what's up.

Kevin

[Max8319]

well, the OS 9 drivers are very mature compared to the OS X drivers. the OS X drivers are probably in their first version, therefore still have a few bugs in them. in future releases, these issues are likely to be fixed. for now, you'll just have to try to avoid the problem.

[mrchin]

Sell your CD Player and any other miscellaneous items for $250. Add the $150 you wanna spend and get an iPod.