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Mossberg: New Sony Player "Inferior" to iPod
by , 1:05 AM EDT, July 28th, 2004
Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg writes in his Wednesday solutions column that Sony's Network Walkman NW-HD1 digital music player is "markedly inferior overall" to the Apple iPod.
"It has a confusing, complex user interface that makes it hard to use; weak software for the PC; an oddball music format that makes loading it with songs tedious; and a companion music download service that offers less than Apple's. The iPod wins this round, and remains champion," Mr. Mossberg wrote.
Major negatives to the US$399 Sony NW-HD1 included is inability to play standard MP3 files, slow transferring of music files, and not being able to recharged, or connected to a computer, directly.
"But the Walkman's biggest weakness is its lousy user interface, which is dense and confusing," he wrote. "The SonicStage 2 software and the Connect music store are also badly designed. This is because, for all its historic brilliance in designing hardware, Sony stinks at software."
While criticizing the Sony device, Mr. Mossberg said it beats the iPod with a smaller size by 10% and "trounces the Apple in battery life," 22 hours to the iPod's 12 on a single charge.
In the end, Mr. Mossberg said the Sony players problems outweigh its positives, for now. "Until Sony fixes the multitude of sins in this product, steer clear of it," he recommends."
Editor's Note: The link provided in the first paragraph to Mr. Mossberg's column is a free and open link, but is only available until Wednesday evening, August 4, 2004.
Observer Comments
Wed Jul 28, 2004 2:34 am Subject: iPod killer?! Yawn.
Does Sony seriously think their player (can't call it an MP3 player) will not only compete, but dominate the iPod? What a joke. Its flaws are huge and glaring:
1. Apple gets flack for not playing WMA files on the iPod. Well at least you can play some open standards on the iPod. Sony makes you change everything into their proprietary format, protected or not.
2. Their claim that it only plays ATRAC because its higher quality is totally bogus for MP3's you already have. The quality is not going to get better when you encode into ATRAC, that's impossible. It can only stay the same or degrade, the latter being more likely because you are changing formats.
3. In order to fill the player, you'll have to have twice as much available HS space for converted MP3's: 20 for the original MP3's, plus another 20 for the converted ATRAC files.
4. Who wants to carry around a cradle all the time?! This totally negates any size/weight advantage of the Sony. Plus, even if you do carry around a cradle, you have to plug it into the computer and the AC EVERY FREAKING TIME!!
5. As far as aesthetics, the player is barely smaller than the iPod, and certainly is not more distinctive. It looks not all that different from all the other dime a dozen players out there. The iPod stands out, most people recognize it, which definitely has contributed to its success.
6. The Dell DJ got toasted by the iPod even though the price was lower. Now, Sony thinks they can compete when their player costs 33% more?? What a joke.
I don't know what the Sony execs were smoking when they came up with this thing. Of course, they also sell a 256 MB flash player for $300, so I guess we can't expect much...
Anyone want to make bets as to how soon they cut the price or start giving rebates for sending them your iPod, like Dell did?
It doesn't have a prayer.
)
Sony used to be a great company, but they've been doing more and more harebrained things lately. None of their current camcorder lineup can compete with a Sony I bought 5 years ago. They closed all their repair centers just as their defect rates skyrocketed. They botched MiniDisk by making the data and music versions utterly incompatible with each other. (They couldn't even use the same blank disks!) Some of the newer D8 camcorders can't even play Hi8. (Why else would you pick D8 over DV?) There is no reason why anyone other then Sony would want to use their memory stick format - which also has incompatible variations.
So far, only their videogame department has escaped unscathed. (We'll see about the PS-portible.)
Wed Jul 28, 2004 3:25 pm Subject: Sony's Battery Life
Sat Aug 07, 2004 1:15 pm Subject: Re: but hey
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
the NW-HD1 is much lighter and 22hours of playback is when it s playing 128kbps when you play 48kbps you get 30 hours
Where is a link to support this? I'm not doubting you, just wondering since I have not found anything that says the battery life is based on 128Kbps.
The biggest weakness the Sony faces is the music format. Regardless of what one says about the quality of ATRAC3+music originally provided in that format, the fact of the matter is you have to convert (read decompress and re-compress) all other formats into ATRAC3+ in order to load it onto the player. Things do not improve when being re-compressed, regardless of the algorithm used. You are putting lossy on top of lossy.
QuoteIntruder wrote:QuoteAnonymous wrote:
the NW-HD1 is much lighter and 22hours of playback is when it s playing 128kbps when you play 48kbps you get 30 hours
Where is a link to support this? I'm not doubting you, just wondering since I have not found anything that says the battery life is based on 128Kbps.
More importantly, the songs at Sony's music store are encoded at a higher bitrate than 128 (I want to say 136... anyone have the exact spec?), so that should be the barometer for the NW-HD1's battery life.
I'm going to give Sony the benifitg of the doubt and say that consumers are stupid (Dell's market share proves this) and buy it. You have to wonder about reliablity. I mean, Sony used to be world renowned for it's reliablity, what with its walkmen, Hi8 cameras, and VCRs working for 20 years withou an issue. But Sony has gone down the drain. And I disagree with the person who said only thier systems are still reliable. I peg them as the worst of the pack. How many of us had to play with our PlayStations on their sides or upside down beacuse the drive motor was garbage?
QuoteAFCdtLoeb wrote:
How many of us had to play with our PlayStations on their sides or upside down beacuse the drive motor was garbage?
Not me! (Go xbox, it's your birthday, go xbox)
On a side note, I think another thing that led to Sony going poo-poo (from what I've heard), is that the software that they have with all their hardware now is complete crap, like, all the stuff they include with their otherwise pretty good multi-format DVD burners is totally retarded and hard to use. The last thing I enjoyed from them was my minidisc player, which at the time was awesome, but with a 1-1 recording time and 80 minute discs now just seems so silly next to my 3G 20GB iPod
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