also red stick, no battery
came pre-loaded with 14 songs. Aside from Public Enemy (nice track too) , they’re from artists i’ve never heard of.
the music manager automatically checks for and installs software/firmware upgrades, which is a nice touch. not sure i like this song database thingy.
got mine, with the red stick. not sure i understand what “sw” stands for as far as how to get songs transferred to it. whenever i plug the usb in and turn the thing on, the computer wants to install the software for my new hardware, but can never find it, even if i point it to the cd that was provided. i know i’m missing something, so if someone would be kind enough to tell me where i’m being an idiot, i would greatly appreciate it. thanks!!
**Oh boy, don’t mind me, I’m numb sometimes. figured out the sw as being software (doh!), but still having trouble getting any songs loaded to the player. i brought up the program from the provided software, but after i select the songs the “ready” button at the bottom doesn’t change to reflect that I can put them on the player. am i being really stupid? :oops:
UPDATE!
Rio gave me an RMA for the defective one without any problems at all. They msut subscribe to the Les Schwab school of customer service! The other one, which has the red stick, did not need anything special to load music. I plugged it into my machine (XP Pro) and dragged & dropped toons to it for my daughter. She’s been in music heaven since!
Now this is quite a cool little item. We have a IRiver H320 to carry ALL our music, so this will be just the complement for small musical forays. The menu system seems easy to navigate… the contrast was initially set very low and I got a little scared. But fixed it in a jiff. Am set to add music now… will have to go get an SD card now!
Thanks WOOT!
Our first WOOT by the way, and as a result of, yes, the WSJ article!
How to you get it to recognize the SD card? I put one in but it’s still only showing about 118mb and will only hold about 33 songs. Nice little player for the money, but I sure hope it will work with the 512 card I have
Mine last checked in in Illinois, I wish UPS was a bit faster. 
thanks guys don’t need help any more (guess i forgot to mention i was an old grandma LOL), i finally figured out the problem. once i updated the version of the software i had, it worked fine.
You can try to go here and update ur player/program
http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/support/rio/product.asp?prodID=107
First post for me…I just got my Rio Cali today, threw my 1GB SD Card in. It didn’t recognize the songs on the card already ( I figured as much), but my cali listed 1118MB free. I’m not using my 1GB card with it, so i didn’t actually try any songs, but it looks to me like it recognizes a 1GB card just fine.
www.buy.com had a kingston for like $15 after rebate
This is really too many posts for one night, but I installed the Powertoy for Digital Audio Devices, and my Cali is now showing up under “My Computer” and I can view the songs on it. Again, as I am lazy I didn’t try the old drag and drop, but it looks like it would work.
Red Stick or Black stick?
Did yuou need to load a driver, or was it recognised by the PC as a drive?
Red Stick… I loaded the Rio software and the Powertoy for Digital Devices, and now whenever I plug it in, regardless of the Rio software running, it recognizes it as a Digital Audio Device, and I can see all the MP3s and WMAs on it.
You might need to go into your computer settings and assign your SD card a drive letter. I got mine yesterday, put my SD card in before putting in the battery, and it saw the card right away. When I hooked the player up to my computer later, the computer gave the player a drive letter and the SD card another letter. Exciting! I was able to drag-and-drop songs from the card to the Rio!
To assign a drive letter, plug your Rio into your computer, right-click on My Computer icon, select Manage. From the list of choices, select Disk Management. You should see your Rio and your SD card. The one you can’t see is probably using a drive letter already used by your computer for something else. Right-click on it and select Change Drive Letter and path. Choose the drive you want to change, click the Change button and change it to the letter you want! Choose OK and you’re all set. You should be able to see your SD card now in the Explorer window.
I got mine yesterday – black stick! Didn’t have to use the CD at all. Like many others, it didn’t come with the battery even though the list of items mentions one. Love the earbuds! 
thank you!
Can you confirm the firmware version on your “RED” Sticked Rio? (under the menu, go to about…). My red was shipped w/ fw 1.10 and the RMM upgraded to 1.12, and I installed the drivers and the powertoy, but it still can’t be seen by Explorer.
Maybe your Red one actually has version 2 innards. I think Black stick version 2s have fw 2.xx.
Version 1.12
Do you have a link to thie Powertoy and drivers you downloaded for the Rio? Thanks.
My first Woot and looking forward to receive mine today…
Now if i get the Black Stick Version should i bother at all to install RMM ? Or this is essential for firmware upgrades to the player?
What’s the fastest way to load music in to it by the way? I’ve heard RMM is kinda of a pain though…
thanks
**got mine yesterday. no battery, red stick, the tip inside usb port damaged but still can be pluged in with usb cable.
got all updates from the support web site, still could not get the usb device recognized by by laptop, which is running win2003. – anyone luckier with win2003?
will try again tonight with xp machine…
**