I'm a liitle disappointed with the Rio Cali. I was attracted by its aesthetics (Black and OD Green
color, sporty rubber/plastic chassis), its functionality (belt clip and arm band), its
non-proprietary standard interfaces (USB 1.1 and SD/MMC), and its reputation (Rio 500, et al).
However, it does NOT permit the use of the SD/MMC card for transfer, only storage.
The SD/MMC does not use FAT (and I believe it does not use ext2 either, at least my zaurus PDA can't
detect it). Therefore one is not able to use a laptop SD/PCMCIA port directly to put songs onto the
card -- the USB cable must be used.
I had hoped to purchase several SD cards so that I could swap them out when I want to hear something
else. But it seems that the SD memory is merged with the internal memory and that any swapping will
"break" the file system.
Another design flaw (or "feature"😉 is that in order to add/remove/replace the SD card one has to:
- open the battery compartment
- remove the AAA cell
- remove the SD/MM card
- replace the AAA cell
- reinstall the battery compartment cover
- reset the internal clock (or else it will display the wrong time and date - Jan 01 midnight)
I also don't like having to reset the time whenever I replace the batteries every other day.
It also throw every track into a flat file system (no visible subdirectories) and it does NOT allow
album play. A computer must be used to manually create a playlist for each album or you will have to
hear your Fleetwood Mac interspersed with your Youssou Ndour, Beethoven, Tilahun, and Guthrie. On
the positive: battery life is excellent, well over 11 hours for one AAA (I've accidently left mine
on for over 24 hours and it was still playing)