I've had my Carbon for about three weeks, brought for £119 from Currys. Supplied with a USB cable that didn't work, so my computer was telling me the device was malfunctioning. Just before I took it back in a mood to the shop, I tried a different cable, and found that it was the cable that wasn't working. No big problem.
I personally love the fact that it's not an Ipod. I guess many people will think the opposite. It looks good, and sounds great. Though I have to say the earphones supplied were a bit ropey. Strangely if you pushed the plug all the way in, you got a hissing noise, but have it about 2/3 of the way and it's fine. I've got some decent Sony earphones that I use and they work fine plugged in properly.
A big advantage over the Ipod for me is the size of the hard drive, 5gb compared to the 4 of the Ipod mini, and it's cheaper too. So far I have put about 40 albums on it and still have 2.8 Gb left. So that will keep me occupied for a while.
Downloading music is easy with the Rio Music Manager. (supplied)This programme allows you to set the music genre etc with a whole list of them, 98% of which I've never even heard of! (What the hell is NEGERPUNK?Sweetcorn Dub? It must be my age.) When playing music you can then select to play music by artist, album, genre or playlist. So plenty of ways to decide what to listen to. You can also use windows explorer to transfer your music, but this is less flexible than the music manager. Downloading takes a remarkably small amount of time, sorry no facts and figures to give you, but it's short enough to not bother me. (I have the attention span of a goldfish so if it took too long I'd be pacing up and down! ) I tend to download my music whilst doing other stuff on the internet.
I use Roxio Creative CD to convert my music CD's to MP3 and find that even at its best compression setting the sound is great. This is helped by the graphic equaliser on the player which has 5 settings, plus a custom setting.
The controls are simple, I am a perfect example of a pragmatist - one who is incapable of reaching for the instruction book, (or CD in this case) and I was able to get it up and running with little head scratching. Menus are acccessed by a little button on the side, and you can either use the 4 direction control on the front or the wheel on the top right to scroll down. Selections are made using the button in the middle of the 4 direction controller. I'm sure there are technical names for all of these but who cares!
I have one small gripe, even though you can randomise all the songs on your player, it doesn't seem possible to randomise the playback of songs within a particular album. That may just be me being unable / unwilling to read the instructions though.
The battery life is stated at 20 hours, no idea whether this is accurate or not, but I have been using mine at work for the last few days attached to some mini speakers and the battery life has impressed me. Sorry I didn't set my stop watch to see how long it lasted for, but the Ashes needed monitoring on the internet. (Oh yes, and I was supposed to be working to.) The battery is charged via the USB cable, either from the computer, or from a nifty little adaptor for a plug socket. It doesn't take long to charge at all.
Apparently it has a stopwatch and a voice recorder, though I have no need for such things, so can't really comment on them.
The carry case that comes with it is an absolute waste of plastic, it has no belt hook or anything, so all in all pretty pointless. You can get one from the internet, specifically designed for the Carbon with a window on it for the controls, etc etc. This was too expensive for me at £29.99. I looked in Jessops camera shop and found a really small Lowepro digital camera case, which is the perfect size at £9.95. This has a belt loop, and a small pocket which is perfect for the earphones. No window for the controls obviously, but it's not the hardest thing in the world to take it out and do what you want! It has the benefit of being lightly padded which will help to protect the player. This is quite important, as the back is shiny metal, and already showing signs of wear and tear with small scratches to go with the fingerprints. This is no issue for me, as I don't mind it looking like it has seen some life and use.
In summary, easy to use, good to look at, sounds great and space for loads of music. I cannot really say anything bad about this MP3 player, I looked at nearly every player on the market on this web site as well as many others, and really took my time to choose. I am completely satisfied with my decision, and would recommend it to anyone.