Bought a Rio Cali refurb. The volume didn't work on the first one. Got the manufacturer to send another one and that one lasted 4 mos. before it completely broke.

$40 for 256? what a joke. for 7 times that price you can get 80 times the storage

lol... http://bagofcrap.ytmnd.com/

herrojima wrote:

NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO the only draw back is you can't (least i haven't been able too) pull music off of it l8s!

Maybe DRM for the music tracks is causing a problem, otherwise it should be as easy to pull tracks off the player as it is to put tracks on the player.

Just open Windows File Explorer and drag and drop the files onto/off of the player. You don't need special software to load/unload files. The player appears as a HD in Windows. In fact, the internal memory appears as one HD and any installed memory card will appear as another HD.

scott
tscottme@hotmail.com

The problem with refurbished items is if you are looking to find some Christmas presents or a gift for someone then nothing says thoughtful more than having REFURBISHED on the box...

i'll take one

w00t!

Got one of these last time it was wooted. Good MP3 player with good sound. My only complaint is that the battery compartment coveris kind of chintzy and hard to remove. The second time I had to change batteries, I must have snapped one of the little prongs 'cause now the cover won't stay on real well. The battery stays in place without it, so no biggee I guess, but, you know, caveat emptor. Which means "the king eats fish eggs"

NIce Woot! love my ipod but miss not having the FM coolio!!

Bag of Crap please !

we need Beverage of Choice

I've bought 2 RIO players here in hte past few months.
I got myself the 128M version of this Forge
I got my wife the 256M version of the Cali, which is almost exactly the same, but all black with no chrome.

I love mine. Never a problem.
The SD slot for expansion cards means that I have no issues with running out of storage space, and I picked up a 256M card today for $9.99


If I could find a use for this, I'd buy it.

heck no. i have the 128mb one that i got from this website... and just a couple months later it stopped working. :-( dumb thing

Come on WooT, you can do better than that.

Who the hell buys a 256mb player anymore when u have players in the 40 GB and 60GB range. even buying a plain old 1 GB player is worth alot more then a 256mb one. god people that buy these types of products should committ suicide or better yet just give me you money.

CoffinDweller wrote:

Do you have a link for this??

yeah http://gettheheckoutofyourstupidchairanddrivetoofficedepot.biz

stretchvtec wrote:

Who the hell buys a 256mb player anymore when u have players in the 40 GB and 60GB range. even buying a plain old 1 GB player is worth alot more then a 256mb one. god people that buy these types of products should committ suicide or better yet just give me you money.

some people just want something that they can put a few CD's on an go running. You ever try to run/jog/rollerblade with an ipod? it's heavy. And to expensive to take to the track.

The stopwatch/lap timer make it very tempting but 40$ for 256mb? Naaaah.

fourth page!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This will definitely be good for working out and doing more active stuff when you don't necessarily need to have every friggin song in the universe with you. I wouldn't want to go out running with a 300$ gadget strapped to my arm.

I still say this is a goodun. ;)

stretchvtec wrote:

Who the hell buys a 256mb player anymore when u have players in the 40 GB and 60GB range. even buying a plain old 1 GB player is worth alot more then a 256mb one. god people that buy these types of products should committ suicide or better yet just give me you money.

Hey, jackhole. Here's a clue. Know what happens if you get your big expensive iPod stolen out of your car or your gym bag? You cry and moan and piss and boohoo. Know what happens when I get my $30 player stolen? I shrug and buy another one.
People like you (or more specifically, just you) should kill yourself. Go into your garage. Plug your $300 iPod into your car stereo. Start the engine. Wait.

stretchvtec wrote:

Who the hell buys a 256mb player anymore when u have players in the 40 GB and 60GB range. even buying a plain old 1 GB player is worth alot more then a 256mb one. god people that buy these types of products should committ suicide or better yet just give me you money.

You can't compare the storage capacity of a device like this, which stores everything on flash memory, to a device that uses a hard drive, which is what the 40-60GB devices use. Battery life on a hard drive-based device is a lot shorter than battery life on a flash-based device. Not only that, but this player has a socket for additional cards. You'd be able to add storage to it a little bit at a time, organize your music on various cards, and even use it as an SD reader for your PC.

Sure, you could get a 512MB or even a 1 GB flash-based player for more money. But, not everybody has $200 to spend on an MP3 player. The truth is, you can't get a 256MB MP3 player for less than this price. I saw a some "Black Friday" sales that had players for $40, and they were all 256MB. Sure, they weren't refurbished, but at least you don't have to get up at 3 AM to spend 2 hours standing in the freezing cold to buy from Woot.

Yes, there are some deals you can get using rebates, but that involves having to have the extra money to put out until you get the rebate. When it comes down to it, if you have no more than $40 to spend on an MP3 player, this is a good deal.

Back when they did the 128 MB refurb in April...I went through 3 before I got one that worked for longer than 5 minutes before dying, and that one died within three weeks of very light usage and the company that bought out Rio wouldn't replace it any more.

So I remember last time this came up somebody said that they had "the exact same model" and used a 1GB card successfully, despite the fact that the product info says it only works up to 512 mb. So, are we sure that a 1Gb card will work? Because I'd hate to buy one and get stuck with it.

But Best Buy had one today that held 2x as much for 2$ less

$40.00 for only 256MB??? Rather spend the extra $ for a gig ipod

4 hrs is plenty 4 me

this does not seem like a good deal.... 40 bucks? for 1/4 a gig? no woot from me.

no thanks, not a 256 mb

tork91 wrote:

So I remember last time this came up somebody said that they had "the exact same model" and used a 1GB card successfully, despite the fact that the product info says it only works up to 512 mb. So, are we sure that a 1Gb card will work? Because I'd hate to buy one and get stuck with it.

Yes. The "512MB spec" comes from the dated documentation, not any real limitation of the player or the firmware. I have been using a 1GB SD card for months and months. My bet is that the newer 2GB cards would work. However with the 2GB cards so expensive it's probably risky to buy one to prove the point.

One you install a memory card in the player, it appears as one more HD to your PC's OS. The internal memory is one HD and the memory card is another HD.

Buying another Rio product. Bought a different Rio player earlier this year and it has worked very well. Comfortable investing in another Rio. Hope this one holds up as well!

Just don't like the ultra-high price iPods (or the no-screen iPods) (or the can't-change-the-battery iPods).

my first woot! buy. I like the smaller flash-based MP3 Players.

i mostly load 'em with radio shows for the day and listen while I work,
so I don't need gigs of storage, also no tears if it gets lost or broke.
My others are an irock and a creative MuVo, so now I'll have a back-up.

Just bought another one. I got the first one earlier this year and it works great. The limited memory is fine for me. I use it to listen to the podcast of a radio show or to Audible books. The more I hear about Ipods, the more I like this little player. Who wants to recharge a nonreplaceable battery, when you can just pop in another AAA battery into this player?

If you want to carry around your whole music collection, obviously this isn't for you. For me it's just right.

Ho Ho HO. Hard to believe, but I'm still using my iZON POC . I't working fine, with a 512 card. Plenty of space for daily use or a short trip.
Those of you that think that think 1 gig or less is just too puny are suffering from typical American "More is always better" syndrome. If your wives and girlfriends felt that way, you'd protest.

Crappy Woot, I expected a lot more. 256mb for $40 is pathetic! What kind of business are you running here! Nanos are 199! Get with the program!
Frustrated because their hasn't been one thing on here that I'm interested in for a good couple of weeks!

lilstoney wrote:

Crappy Woot, I expected a lot more. 256mb for $40 is pathetic! What kind of business are you running here! Nanos are 199! Get with the program! Frustrated because their hasn't been one thing on here that I'm interested in for a good couple of weeks!

Shut up moron! its a great deal these are selling for much more other places, and the fact that its expanable memory is awesome.

- Nathan0490

dawinky wrote:

nice price but still not needed

agreed.

I can't believe that nobody has mentioned that Rio is going out of business. Rio has gone through a bunch of different owners. It ended up with D&M Holdings (a Japanese company which owns Denon and Marantz (duh) among others). The announced on August 30th that they were withdrawing from the market.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/30/rio_quits_mp3_arena/

This is too bad, because the Rio Carbon was very well reviewed recently, and they seemed to be moving in the right direction.

The importance here is that this is going to be an orphan product very shortly. Given that they have a SanDisk 512 selling for $40.00 at Best Buy, there is little need to buy this.

Ok, when will the Woot Off come? Black Friday is over.
Call me stupid, but if I ran this Zoo, I would Woot Off Often due to Christmas coming up. Woot should get the $$$ before we spend it all at Best Buy!

My 2 Cents!