Loads of people complained about SonicStage and finally, last year, Sony listened and came out with some nice players that didn't need it (nws-610 series, nws-a810 series). You can use Windows Media Player, Rhapsody (doesn't support subscription/purchases as far as I can tell), Napster (supports subscription/purchases), and drag and drop from Windows Explorer. Sound quality is excellent and the 810 series came with quirky, but great sounding headphones.
I'm mainly an iPod user and I own 6, including the 5th gen and Touch, but I still like to add non-iPods to my collection, especially if they're small and inexpensive. So, I also have a Creative Zen Stone (sounds good, doesn't support id3 tagging, no screen), SanDisk Sansa Clip (sounds great, use it for Rhapsody subscription, fm tuner), and SanDisk Sansa Express (sounds good, also use for Rhapsody subscription, fm tuner).
Almost a month ago, I walked into my local SonyStyle store to check out their newer players. The NWS-A720 and NWS-A820 series are really nice, but I wasn't really looking for another player as I still mainly use my iPods. But I saw last years NWS-A816 for sale (4GB, $99), which I previously tried out and was impressed with, so I bought it. Without even looking at the owner's manual or the cd it came with, I hooked it up to my computer and and tried the various programs I already had on it. Windows Media Player - works! Rhapsody - works! Windows Explorer drag and drop - works! Of course, it doesn't work with iTunes, but I can drag and drop my iTunes Plus tracks to it (it supports non-DRM'ed AAC files) via Windows Explorer. I can't get my videos to work with it, but that's a minor issue as they are all formatted for iPods (but not from the iTunes Store) and I view all my videos on the Touch. Oh cool, I just found out my CNET videos will play on it.
You could give Sony another chance. But, if you feel too burned, there are other players out there. Just do some research first and come back here with questions.
Hi everyone,
I had to vent out my recent purchase of this incredibly crappy hardware and software combo from Sony. I recieved a NW-A1200 for my b-day last year. I plugged it in and loaded up the SonicStage software it ships with.
That's when the problems began. This software is one of the biggest pieces of crud in software history. I seriously wanted to find the person responsible for developing this kak and cause him greivious phuysical harm.
My problem is the defaults. Normally defaults are defaults because they make the most sense. Well if you install this software using the defaults and use the defaults to build your music library, it will add EVERYTHING on your computer that is audio. This includes Windows keybeeps, 'you've got mail' and various other stupidness. So once you've managed to get that all cleaned up you'll notice something quite bizzare. All your music is sorted by album name. What the hell is the point of this trend to sort by album? Who actually does this? I have no idea which the name of the album is for 99% of the music I listen to, all I care about is the damn song name!!
But since it's all organized by album, I can't skip through the songs to find the one I want to listen to. Instead if I have several songs by the same group on the same album I have to listen to them all to finally get to the one I actually wanted to hear.
So anways, onto the hardware. After having several problems with the device erroring out and shutting down the HDD finally crashed entirely and it wouldn't turn on at all, just started clicking loudly and finally gave an error code. And since it was a b-day gift and I had no receipt, well I was up a creek.
Here's were I did something really stupid. I allowed myself to buy another sony device to replace it. Months had passed, and I assumed that the software issues were probably worked out and I really liked the shoulder mounted NW-S205 model. So I stupidly decided to give Sony another shot.
The software is just as crap as ever. I downloaded a complete CD of music onto the device just to realize that I could not skip through the songs because they were all on the same album. Trying to skip just caused it to start from the beginning again.
I don't even care if there's a way to re-configure this so that the software doesn't sort by album anymore. This is just way to invovled for me. I want to plug my walkman in, transfer my music and just be able to listen to it. THis piece of crap is harder to work with than a freaking cassette walkman, at least with a cassette walkman I could fast forward, but this this I can't.
Sony is crap.

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