Well, it finally happened, my Karma died. I could of saved it again (I have dumb friends who break my electronics), but I'm giving up. I'm going to salvage the hdd, but otherwise, there's nothing left of real value to me.

Goodbye Karma, you have served me well.

My poor, dead Rio Karma. RIP

I cannot tell you guys (and gals) all the details due to a particular bias of mine, but there is now a project to add USB support for the Rio Karma under Linux.

I found the Sonic Blue Rio CE2100(black)/CE2110(green) for $129.99 with a $40 Rebate at FYE this weekend. So that gives it a grand total of $89.99. And for a 2.5 GB Microdrive based mp3 player That is a great deal.

The CE2100 is basically the Rio Carbon with a smaller 2.5 GB Microdrive instead of the 5GB of the Carbon. The drive can theoretically be upgraded although I haven't attempted that. The one other thing it doesn't have is voice record capability. Again, i believe the microphone is there but it is disabled in the firmware, which begs the question, can we download the real Rio Carbon firmware to it to enable it?