Has anyone heard about the new sony mp3 player? I am thinking about getting one. I have been meaning to get an mp3 player and I want to avoid ipods.
My little sister has this one (in purple of course) and it works fine. She had trouble with the software at one point, but it wasn’t serious, and it works fine now. The screen is really cool, cuz it disappears behind it’s mirror like surface when not in use.
Also reccomended are the Creative mp3 players. They are the main rival to the iPods and I have their 20GB model. The smaller models are a good price and work really well, with lots of extra features. Customer service is also very good. (I had a problem with it connecting to my computer, but it turned out it was the computer, not the player).
Hope that helps 
I also reccomend creative players. I dropped mine in the toilet, and they replaced it free of charge.
And not to say that Sony one isn’t good, but after those rootkit DRM issues, I don’t really trust them when it comes to digital music things.
I reccomend the creative zen touch, that’s what I had, and it worked great.
Before getting a Sony MP3 player, double-check to make sure that it plays MP3 files in the native MP3 format. Some Sony MP3 players only actually play Sony’s ATRAC format and only support MP3 files by first converting them to ATRAC. I’m not sure if the conversion is done by the software on the PC that transfers the music to the player or on the player itself. An MP3 file going through an additional round of lossy compression is going to suffer in quality. I’d be wary of getting a Sony MP3 player unless you know for sure that it doesn’t convert MP3 files to ATRAC.
If you’re looking for a flash based player with a capacity of 2-6 GB then hold out for the SanDisk Sansa series. Should be good. Due to be available at the end of March (soon). It might even make some iPod Nano users envious.
Personally, I’m staying away from Creative products from now on. I got burned on 2 of the last 3 products of theirs… My Zen Jukebox died literally about a week after the 3 month warranty ran out, and they wanted $20 just to tell me what was wrong with it.
Samsung has a new player coming out soon with an interface designed by the same guy who designed the iPod interface, it’s also supposed to have something like 30 hours of battery life.
I’ve been a fan of creative hardware for years - all the products I’ve had have lasted “disgustingly long lives”. I say “disgustingly long” because I can’t justify buying new things when the current one is still working just fine - that’s why my Creative Nomad Zen NX (30G) is sitting right next to me kicking butt like the day I got it.
The only complaint I have about Creative is that their software interfaces SUCK. They don’t seem to have any consistancy and are largely non-intuitive. Hopefully they’ll hire someone that actually knows how to design software to work with their solid hardware.
I don’t think I could justify spending money on a player that wouldn’t just let me drag things onto it like an external hard drive or something. All this software pisses me off.
I have the Sony NW-A 1000, which works well. The standard Sony Software didn’t work with the “one click” to copy CSs (neither did the iPod software on the iPod I bought first) but I can easily copy from CDs using Windows Media Player. The NW-A 1000 is a nice size, holds enough tracks for me, and fits nicely in a pocket or hand, and feels robust. Its menu/operating system is a bit slow. On the whole I like it.
I have probably an older version sony mp3 player, I know that it converts mp3 siled to ATRAC files, but I didn’t have much choice as my sister brought it back from…somewhere. I haven’t had much of a problem with the player. The only problem I have, is with the software. Avoid SonicStage at all costs. It’s a real pain in the butt to use! I am gonna sell my mp3 player and get one that uses iTunes or just drag and drop or something easier.