Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Frustrated by the scant availability of the iPod Mini? The Rio Carbon five-gigabyte portable music player costs the same ($250) but is smaller and lighter. It has one more gigabyte for MP3, Windows Media, or Audible audio files than Apple's popular mini-model, which means up to 80 hours of tunes. Better yet, it gets nearly 20 hours on a battery charge and includes a voice recorder and stopwatch (but no FM tuner, also lacking on the iPod Mini). The Rio Carbon's tinny ear-bud headphones are disappointing, but everything else about the Carbon rocks.