iRiver Clix First Impressions

My trusty old Rio Carbon died the other day when it fell out of its little carrying case and was abruptly introduced to the cold, harsh reality of a concrete parking garage floor. RIP, Rio.

I needed a replacement (otherwise I can't bear spending time at the gym) but I wasn't going to buy one of these and I also wasn't going to wait for one of these because my requirements are basically "very small," "plays WMAs," and "must be in-stores now."

The Clix meets those requirements and is pretty cute, too. It just arrived and my first impressions (without actually using it yet – how hard can it be to screw up "playing music"?!?):

• They definitely learnt from Apple in the packaging department; 100% white cardboard all around. There's nary a flesh-eating plastic moulded case in sight. Great.
• It is small and white and cute. Not that it really matters; it's not like I'm showing it off as a fashion accessory or anything. But I'll go ahead and call that a positive :-). Great.
• It comes with a CD but why would I want to use it? I plugged the USB cable into my Vista RC2 machine with Windows Media Player 11 and it worked flawlessly. Great.
• The USB cable is not the mini-plug style, but rather the flat-and-skinny style. I used to be able to use the same cable to sync / charge my phone as my Rio, but now I will have to take two cables with me. Not great.
• I dragged over a bunch of albums from my media library and it's happily syncing. Great.

Well, that's about it so far; as long as it can actually play the music while I'm in the gym, it will have met my needs. If not, I'll let you know more later...