I picked this post from the Rio World site.

Microsoft have launched a new tool for portable audio devices in Windows XP. Although this is part of the Plus! Digital Media Edition pack, the Power Toy is available to download free of charge.

The Power Toy gives you a My Audio Devices entry in My Computer, under which supported portables appear. When you open them you get a Windows Explorer style view of the portable content, including metadata such as title and artist. You can load content onto the portable simply with drag & drop or cut & paste from your hard drive.

We have worked with MS for the last few months to ensure that the Power Toy is supported on most of our products, including the Rio Riot. The download URL for the drivers at sonicblue.com is provided on the Microsoft page.

Start at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/plus/dme/mehome.asp

The click the Power Toy link near the bottom of the page to download the toy and find the links for the SONICblue drivers. Don't forget, this is XP only.

Enjoy!

The link doesn't work so try this one:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/plus/dme/portabledevices.asp#PTAudio

I downloaded the tool and drivers but haven't tryed it out yet, but I figured I'd pass it along.

The correct link is:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/plus/dme/dmehome.asp

Thanks. The link I posted just brings you in a little further.

XP ONLY ?! damn. Foiled again.

How's the wind treating you?

IT WORKS !!!

Better yet you can copy files from windows explorer directly to the Riot, just like it always should have been. Just right click on an mp3 file and select send to=>Riot, easy.

I've already got rid of Real JukeBox. Thank you SonicBlue (sorry can't bring myself to thank M$)

All the functions are the same really as Real JukeBox, but the interface is alot better, and if like me you have all you albums stored in different directories already it is much simpler to transfer the file. Also a little quicker ??? Or is this my brain playing trick on me ???

Cheers

Cris.

Wow.. it works great!!! THanks for the info!

As for speed, I cannot really compare as transfer was hanging a lot (still don't know why, but now it don't) but I transfered with a 233 laptop and Moodlogic software and was not getting very much over 200k/s and now it goes at 575k/s (on my desktop)

And is it just me or the files previously transfered are shown as .wav files? They are in fact .mp3 because they range from 3 - 8 megs... any clue?

Patrick

Could anyone confirm: Maybe I found the cause of hangup during tranfer:

I tried transfering a few directories and the software seems to dislike certain files: It copies them to the riot, but almost when it's ready to copy next file, I get the following error message:

The file 02 - Rose-Coloured Glasses.mp3 could not be copied. It may not exist or is being used by another program.

The transfer always hang for the same files and always at the end of them... Then I went and looked for differences and got it: Files with track number like: 03/14 always hang ... I removed the "/14" and they transfered correctly.

Further tests show that files with format "xx/yy" as track number and with more than 1 digit as yy are rejected with the mentionned error message... Is this kind of track number (03/14) a standard or should the tag only contain 03. The program I use to tag (mp3-info shell extension) has 2 text box to type track number and total track. (see attachement) I though it was right to do so... maybe I'm wrong...

And why did I tag ALL my mp3 with that format... have to retag all of them again ;-(

Patrick

How's the wind treating you?

only been out twice this year, but i'm goin' out today if the wind picks up!

Praise the lord Jesus it's a miracle ! All I have to do is open a window and drag the tracks to it.

I just want to ask in case I am missing it we can't edit the track info after the file has been uploaded to the player right ?

Dammit!!! Don't make me upgrade to XP JUST to make the Rio Riot usable!!!

You know you will.

I don't think that function has changed, so no.

Not sure if you've tried it out yet - I for one don't care for it!

It does work, so that's a plus. But it doesn't act at all like opening just another window or drive. On my hard drive for example, I have a folder for every artist. Within them, I have folders by album. Within that are the songs on that album. But when I view the Riot contents via WinXP, I just see song names. Tons and tons of song names. It appears the Riot categorizes using the ID3 tags, so that's a bonus. But if you were to say choose to delete an album using this powertoy - all you could do is find each song one by one and attempt to remove them.

In short, nothing like "just another window", nothing like the emplode either.

Guess I'll try the bundled Real software, oh joy!