Contrast Rio Karma to RB'd iPod for Ogg playback?

[Apesbrain]

My Rio Karma has finally died and I think Rockbox on a 5G iPod may be my best alternative now.

For anyone who is listening to Ogg files on a Rockbox'd 5G iPod (latest gen before the new ones just released), can you tell me about the experience?

Specific questions:

- Any problems playing back Ogg q6? (My library is primarily Ogg, with some MP3 and non-DRM WMA)
- In WinXP, how do you load files onto the Rockbox'd iPod?
- Does gapless work as expected for both Ogg and MP3?
- How is the battery life?

Thanks much if you reply,
Apesbrain

[markun]

My Rio Karma has finally died and I think Rockbox on a 5G iPod may be my best alternative now.

I think the iriver H1x0 is a better alternative, unless you want a color display this time.

- Any problems playing back Ogg q6? (My library is primarily Ogg, with some MP3 and non-DRM WMA)

Q6 works fine. We don't have WMA support yet, but we might have soon

- In WinXP, how do you load files onto the Rockbox'd iPod?

drag-n-drop works, but there are also programs to manage your msic.

- Does gapless work as expected for both Ogg and MP3?

yes

- How is the battery life?

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodRuntime

[soap]

My two cents are this:
I bought an ipod knowing it was not the best player out there when measured on technical merits.  I bought an ipod because I keep hardware forever (this computer was built in 1999.)  I believe that 5, 6, 7 years out odds are I will have more repair, upgrade, and hack options avaliable for my ipod (due simply to its marketshare) than any other DAP.

[Yotto]

What Soap said.

I bought an iPod for the hardware.
I installed Rockbox for the software.

As for the battery, that bench page only has a couple 30 giggers on it (I know, I can fix that by adding mine... I really should do one of these).  Once, maybe 2 months ago using Senab's build with the backlight off the whole time, I listened to almost exactly 6 hours of music (Within fifteen minutes either way) before the battery died.  most of my music is 64 and 128kbps mp3s culled from various internet sources, with the occasional (say, 1 out of every 5) vbr mp3 ripped from a cd.