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If the choice is between the Nomad or the Rio 300, I agree that the Nomad is better if for no other reason than the fact that the 300 models lack support for ID3 display.
However, the Nomad is still slapped silly by the 500 in just about every way. First of all, no matter how you slice it, the Rio supports 50% more memory than the Nomad. That alone outweighs the Nomad's tuner and voice recording. If you want the tuner, buy a radio. If you want the voice, buy a digital voice recorder that will give you better quality and better features. If, however, you are interested in MP3 playback, there is nothing better than the 500.
The 500 also happens to have tons of playback features that the Nomad just can't match. You can store songs in different folders, you can make custom programs, you can leave multiple bookmarks in the middle of different songs and come back to them whenever you like. It also has a great customizable EQ, which, while not as powerful as Winamp's EQ, is still worlds better than the Nomad's 3 inadequate settings
You claim: "The Soundblaster Live Value/Gold which can encode mp3s with 3d positional audio can be played ONLY on the Nomad and not on the walkman like Rio" but that sounds like a whole lot of propaganda BS to me. MP3 is a standard format, and both the Nomad and 500 use the same decoder chip that they licenced from a 3rd party company. There is simply no technical way for them to make only the Nomad capable of playing such files.
As for the Nomad II, I have one word: vaporware. Creative Labs announced the Nomad II in response to the release of the 500, without actually having a viable product ready to ship. They also claimed that the price would be "less than $400", not exactly an inspiring figure. Also don't forget that Creative Labs does not actually make the Nomad product, they license it from some Korean or Taiwanese company (I think it was the Yepp player they licensed, but I'm not positive), and just change the name, while Diamond does their own R&D on the Rio instead of recycling mediocre asian-market players.
I readily admit that the Nomad II could be an amazing player when it comes out, but Creative's website gives the release date as "Q2 2000". If you are good at deciphering corporate-speak, you know that Q2 means that it could be shipped as late as June. And the last time Creative announced a released date for the Nomad, it slipped from May to something like August. Who knows what else will be in the MP3 market by that time?
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