Setting up the Rio 500 is just as easy as the D-Link DMP-100. Easier really because of the USB port. Once you turn the Rio 500 on and plug it into a USB port, Windows will detect the unit and ask for the software. The whole process takes only a few minutes.
The Diamond Rio 500 lets you expand the memory with Smart Media. If you find 64 Megs is not enough, you can add in a Smart Media card and expand the memory by whatever size your Smart Media happens to be. I added a 32 Meg card to the unit. This gave me well over 2 hours of non stop music enjoyment.
The software that comes with the Rio 500 is call RioPort audio manager and it's pretty complete. You get a software MP3 player to hear the songs before you transfer them, a program to rip your music CD collection to MP3 format and the program that transfers the song to the player itself. The software used to transfer songs to the Rio 500 is not as simple to use as the included software used in the D-Link DMP-100. The D-Link software is drag and drop and you don't have to drag just MP3's into the player. The Diamond software has a much longer learning period and after using the D-Link software, it's really annoying to use the Diamond software. Diamond could have done a much better job on it. The user interface is nice but the process of getting MP3's into the player totally sucks. And you're only allowed to transfer MP3 files. The main good thing about it is once the transfer starts, it's over and done with pretty quickly. I was able to load up the Rio 500 with 64 megs of music in about five minute. It takes nearly half hour using the serial port of the D-Link DMP-100.