Finally Got My Rh-10

[mcca6392]

Well, after about 4 days of waiting, I got my Japan-spec silver RH10 in the mail on Thursday. And yes, I was anxious as all heck to get it.

Gotta say, no pics of the silver can really do it justice to what it is in person (that's part of the reason I don't have pics up yet...). It shines, reflects, and diffracts almost simultaneously. I've had quite a few comments from iPodisti who can't believe a player can look as elegant as this.

The LCD remote is a godsend (had buttons-only on my N707) for me, especially when I'm on the run. I typically put my player in a sealed Otterbox, and run the cable out. Now I'm no longer guessing on menus, settings, etc.

And the OLED is simply beautiful. Very easy to read, especially at night, and contrary to what I initially thought, it doesn't become very obscured by light reflecting upon the player's surface. The titling characters matrix is really neat - and contrary to some reports, all the characters do fit onto the screen.

Like I said, I haven't been able to get pictures up - and that's mostly because I've been farting around with SonicStage 3.0 the last two days. Simpleburner works fine; SS crashes with DB errors. Thanks to these forums, I'm on it. I cleared registry files tonight, and got it working somewhat. But it soon reversed, and if I try to import more than a single song at a time, it'll crash with the same error. Any form of transfering to MD is perfect - and I'm rather surprised at how much more quickly and smoothly it goes as compared to my N707. Maybe it's Hi-MD, maybe it's the native MP3 support. Regardless, it's nice.

As for the tech problems, I've got 3.1 downloaded at work (bet you can guess how I'll transfer that file.....), and I'm working to get some of my DB patches up and current. I know people say SP2 is a critical factor - but having had problems with it before, I had taken it off my laptop - and now MS won't let me download it again. I'll get it somehow - I hope....

My only complaints are as follows:

-Still a little noisy in terms of mechanism noises. Nowhere as bad as my Sony "ES" tape decks, though, and quieter than my N707.

-Apparently didn't come with an optical cable. I'll check the packaging again, but I don't think it was included.

-Ear buds, but I think that's mainly a personal preference. They sound nice, just are (very) uncomfortable to me.

I'm enamored regardless. I found a good seller for this, and I think I chose a good product. And until I get my SS issues fixed, it'll be used like this:

Hacked N707 on "Line-Out" - 1/8" male to male cable - RH10 "Line-In". But hey - flexibility of recording sources is yet another reason why I buck the iPod mindset....