Mossberg: New Sony Player "Inferior" to iPod

[MacBytes]

Category: Reviews
Link: Mossberg: New Sony Player \"Inferior\" to iPod (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20040728111428)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[micvog]

Apple makes this look so ridiculously easy... but it must not be or surely Sony, Samsung, Dell or Creative would have designed a worthy competitor by now. It is also making HP look smart with their decision to partner with Apple.

[stcanard]

Apple makes this look so ridiculously easy... but it must not be or surely Sony, Samsung, Dell or Creative would have designed a worthy competitor by now. It is also making HP look smart with their decision to partner with Apple.

Agreed. But I think we should take this review with a grain of salt ... I find it really hard to believe that there were features showing up on one side that didn't on the other, and that there are no playlists (that can be found on the player anyway). I'm wondering it it's an iPod user who got confused by a different layout (kind of like when I spent 30 seconds on a iRiver. I could figure it out, but it would take me an hour of playing to find the features).

Of course, if it really is that bad ... I would be selling any sony stock I have. Sofware/firmware that bad and incomplete would be indicative of a company in disarray more than anything.

[nagromme]

I like Sony's claim that the reason all formats are converted to 8TRAC to store on the NW-HD1 is that 8TRAC has superior quality :D Even if that were true, you don't gain quality by converting from a lower format to a better one!

Also... how many people REALLY are affected by whether they get 12 non-stop music hours on an overnight charge or 22? I guess you could charge the Sony "every other" day... but why even think about that? Stow it in the charger when you get home and forget about it.

For my test, I used a very modest collection of 431 standard MP3 files. SonicStage 2 refused to transfer 15 of the files, posting a nonsensical error message. After that, it took an agonizingly long two hours and 13 minutes to transfer the remaining 416 tracks to the Walkman. By contrast, Apple's iTunes software transferred all 431 songs to an iPod in about four minutes.

Ouch! And I didn't realize until now that the app for loading the NW-HD1 is not the same as the music-store app. You've got to use multiple apps??

The details of this Sony device are amazingly poor.

[iMeowbot]

Of course, if it really is that bad ... I would be selling any sony stock I have. Sofware/firmware that bad and incomplete would be indicative of a company in disarray more than anything.
I don't find the points in the review hard to believe at all. Software written by Sony really is consistently that bad, and it's been that way for years.

[iMeowbot]

Ouch! And I didn't realize until now that the app for loading the NW-HD1 is not the same as the music-store app. You've got to use multiple apps??
SonicStage is also what Connect uses. It was an updated version the writer would have needed to get the CD burning capability. The way SonicStage is laid out, it might as well be several separate programs; though; in usual Sony fashion, it's a confused jumble of half-baked interface experiments.

[Photorun]

Duh! Glad to see not all the press has their heads up their arses.

[stcanard]

I don't find the points in the review hard to believe at all. Software written by Sony really is consistently that bad, and it's been that way for years.

Well I guess I should be happen then that I can't think of a single piece of Sony [soft|firm]ware that I've ever used.

My last Sony branded item played cassette tapes.

[nagromme]

I find it really hard to believe that there were features showing up on one side that didn't on the other, and that there are no playlists (that can be found on the player anyway).

I do believe the Walkman lacks some iPod features. Playlists may or may not be one of them, but I guess the point of the reviewer is that even with great effort and several false starts, they were unable to get such a thing working! They had two people doing that review, spending a long time with the product--wearing down the 22-hour battery, and going through the 45-page (!) manual. So I think many/most people would have the same trouble--if the device supports playlists after all.

Reading those descriptions, it doesn't sound like this is merely "different" from the iPod interface. It sounds like an absolute usability disaster. Just from the conflicting and poorly-explained terminology Sony makes you learn... much less the inferior controls and display.

[kerb]

I have a Sony NET MD

The bundled software called OpenMG (I think) is one of the slowest pieces of software I've ever used. It's USB2 upload to the MD was also painfully slow. It took ages to convert to their proprietary format too. Biggest reason I never use that thing.

[JDOG_]

Reading this I am having bad flashbacks of my experience with my first MD walkman a couple of years ago. $129 was a nice-looking pricepoint from Circuit City so I took home a pretty decent player (I enjoyed actually using it for the most part), but the software was simply horrendous.

Not only did it take like an hour to convert my Mp3's to ATRAC3, but then it took an astonishingly long time burning them onto the minidiscs...and this was on a then-fast machine. I don't think Sony will ever wise up to using standardized formats, they have waaaaay too much fun making their own.

[macridah]

Sony keeps on making themselves look like fools, in addition, they waste a lot of money on R&D.

Stick to camcorders and cameras.

[Loge]

The DRM on Sony's store is more restrictive than iTMS. Plus you have to read the small print to find out what it is, and then find that it varies by record label. So you have to remember which songs came from which label in order to know what you can do with them.