sane1

i have the same problem and yeah very annoying to have to wait that long.

HD1 is still the best looking mp3 player i have ever seen.

i love my Vaio Pocket and i'm not sure how the HD5 is with lag, but the Pocket (even with no jacket covers and original skin) is very slow and laggy when manually picking a song... didn't think it would bother me at first, but it is now really getting on my nerves. other than that, the SQ is very good and, besides its size, has a very uniquely attractive design. looks very professional.

actually, the ipod's SQ is quite impressive and a lot of audiophiles swear by it, espeically it's line-out which is considered to be the best out of all the DAP players. if you don't believe me check out the head-fi.com forum. i own the Westone UM2's and have tried my friend's 4G iPod (headphone out) and have to say it's a very clean, high quality sound. the only thing it was missing was a good base response, which is actually very important to me. that is why i love my Vaio Pocket's SQ so much. anyways, the new iPod's are supposed to sound as good as the shuffle which is probably the best sounding mp3 player on the market with a very impressive bass response. wow i just stood up for an iPod.....................

yeah in 2 years they'll have a DAP that's better than the 5G iPod, while Apple will already have a 6-7G iPod out. drastic measures need to be taken by sony for them to even keep up with the iPod.

yeah those are my reasons for prefering sony over iPod, but the lastest iTunes is actually a little better than ss 3.2. also, you got to give it to Apple for having the fastest mp3 finding DAP available... although the clickwheel is just too sensitive for me and anyways i prefer pressing buttons. sony should easily be able to come up with technology as fast or even faster than the clickwheel.. the g-sense was great.. if sony worked on it some more we could have a great new version of a vaio pocket w/ video playback.. too bad that's probably not gona happen. my ideal sony player would be this: an HD1 like design and shape, but instead of the LCD screen they put a OLED screen, 60-80GB, no lag whatsoever (unlike my vaio pocket... errr), line-out on the unit (again unlike pocket), gapless playback for mp3s (unlike A series.. so sad), and the new search, bookmark, playlist, and shuffle features of the A series ... and that's basicaly it. again, it's probably not gona happen. sony is slowly losing me as a fan...

yeah that's what i'm doing at the moment and i've always prefered the default skin... still no difference. it's quite sad. i used my friend's 20GB iPod Photo and it was a breeze to find songs.. no lag whatsoever..

dimitri, thank you. and if you're russian, spasibo. you've answered a simple question that neither sony customer service nor ss customer service could answer. i gave up on them. a bug huh... so i guess i'm just not going to use the Artist option at all. the Group section does it fine, although i'll have to manually organize by alphabetical order. oh well, i'll get over it. the lag does suck, and yeah i did try it out before the firmware update and it was def much more laggier before. i'm really surprised with sony for this. and yeah headphone jack works great in my car with eq off since the sq is so clean, but as for amp use it's no good.

i've had my vaio pocket for a while now and i am absolutely in love with it, especially the superb sound quality (very tight low freq response), startup time, album covers, 40gb for $230 is a steal (even cheaper now), gorgeous display, and battery life... but there are some issues that really bother me: -laggy perforamance (2-3 seconds going from now playing to list of songs (ex. playlist, album) and then another 2-3 seconds to switch to another song once clicked) -crashed a few times already -not as pocket friendly as i first assumed, but i make it so the screen is in my pocket while the g-sense buttons are all out.. allowing me to use the ff,rw,play/stop,vol+,vol- buttons with my eyes closed. -can't use amp + line-out for portable use (requires dock) -sonicstage is horrendous ..those bug me, but my main issue is this, and i'm hoping it's a solvable issue since it deals with sonicstage 3.2: -Artist groupings don't work for me (i click on that artist and, besides their album, it lists a huge number of songs that seems to be a group of a bunch of random songs... idk why this is?!)... so basically all the random/non-album songs of all artists seem to be grouped together as "untitled" or something even though i left it blank for group/album. anybody else have this problem and/or know what should be done?