2. Stop: Software Required

The Rio Music Manager program transfers and manages music items. It is very easy to use, but it does no more than that. Ripping and encoding requires another program, which is in fact like WindowsXP Explorer fashion with the edges smoothed over. The program scans the disk and displays a left-hand window with the players and music arranged in album, author, type and item tabs. To transfer items, you select them and click on the arrow.

Rio Music Manager smoothly manages the file transfer. It displays the contents of the player and all you do is drag a file to it where it is copied. To transfer from player to PC, you do the same thing in reverse. It's all straightforward, but it would have been simpler still to have a mobile disk that Windows automatically recognized.