SONICblue's Rio One Audio Player

It seems like you hear a whole lot less talk about digital audio players since Napster hit the skids, but they're still a personal audio solution that lets you to carry along a ton of tunes without lugging around tapes and CDs. Besides, you've probably already downloaded the equivalent full-sized bowling alley jukebox and what fun is it to be stuck in front of your computer every time you want to boogie. SONICblue just announced the availability of its new Rio One sub-$100 portable digital audio player. It looks similar to Rio 300 MP3 player, but adds a new color scheme, a USB connection and one hour of CD-quality music playback through support for the Windows Media (WMA) file format. The Rio One can be upgraded using flash memory cards to support up to five hours of music playback. The $99 player is currently available on SONICblue's eStore and will be available within the next two weeks in North American retail outlets including Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, and Fry's. The Rio One ships with 32MB of built-in memory, earphones, a USB cable, one AA battery for up to 10 hours of music playback, and audio management software for both the PC and Mac. There's also a range of accessories available for the little gadget, including 32MB and 64MB smart media cards for music storage expansion, a carrying case and a car cassette adapter.