Rio Forge Sport (512 MB) MP3 Player

I decided to buy this item because I listen to lots of audiobooks. NetLibrary is the largest free audiobook supplier and is available through most major public libraries' websites with just your library card number as ID. Unfortunately, all of their books are WMA DRM protected and are one humongously long track averaging 9 to 12 hours (even longer for some books). This presents unique problems.

Most MP3 players are designed for songs or podcasts of relatively short duration. If you accidentally move to the next track, change your battery, decide to take a break and listen to music or the FM radio, it's not a big deal to go back to your original selection and fast forward to where you left off. However, this is not practical if you are in the middle of a 10 hour book and need to find where you left off. So, for practical purposes the need for several features exists. They are:

1) A progressive fast forward button that progressively picks up speed the longer you hold it down
2) One or more true "bookmarks" which you frequently utilize during the listening of a book and absolutely need when you take a break from listening, whether to listen to something else, change batteries, or just quit for a while.
3) A very desirable feature is a "sleep timer" which will turn off the player after a selected period of time and take a bookmark. With the free Forge "Developer's Cut" software this feature has been implemented.

So, what's good and what's bad?

The good is that for a device that can be purchsed for $25 to $50 on ebay you get all of these features. You will not get them for less than $100 - $200 with other MP3 players and at that price many still do not have such support. While the Rio Forge is avaialble only in what seems to be paltry 256MB and 512MB sizes, they accept SD cards. With 1 GB SD cards selling regularly for under $20 you vastly increase the capacity for only a few dollars more. 1.25GB or 1.5GB is enough for 4 to 6 or more complete unabridged audiobooks. Even if you don't listen to audiobooks, you can store and listen to 5 to 10 hour of music at high Kbps levels. If the Rio FOrge worked as it should, it would be a very ideal machine.

So, what's wrong? The Rio Forge likes to turn itself off. This is caused by any jarring or twisting or even pushing a control button too hard or too fast. It is even more sensitive when batery battery declines. (Using the more practical rechargeable NiMH batteries, you start out at a nominal voltage of only 1.25V instead of 1.50V, so the battery meter always starts out at about 3/4 level.) When the system turns off in this abnormal fashion, it is as if you suddenly removed the battery. Your playing position within the track is lost. When you restart you need to go back to the beginning of the track (the beginning of the book with NetLibrary audiobooks). So, unless you had bookmarked shortly before this occurred, you need to find where you left off.

I wish I could say that only my Rio Forge was defective (which it clearly is). However, I have done a fair amount of Internet research and subscribed to several different forums taht discuss these issues. It seems as though this problem is more the rule than the exception.

If you are sitting quietly or laying in bed, you'll probably be OK. But you'll be diappointed if you use this machine while exercising, walking, jogging, or doing housework or yardwork.