hikaritenchi

Thanks everyone for your input. It's too bad to hear that. I love my NW-A3000 if for nothing else than the obscene battery life that it has. I won't buy another Sony DAP product until they start coming out with bigger offerings, 20GB as a minimum. Before that happens, I'll continue to use my NW-A3000 until it dies. So just as a confirmation, I'm better off using SS with the player I have now. When I get another Sony DAP, whether in Japan or here, then I'll deal with it then. The reason I ask about Japan is because I'm probably going there for a study abroad program next year, and would like to use mora.jp and the Japanese SS, which requires Japanese Windows. I guess it's just a waiting game until March 2008 or whenever Sony stops CONNECT in NA.

So I searched a little, and probably not as much as I should have, but what I want to know is this: Since Sony is stopping the CONNECT Music Store in the US and Canada, what will happen to the SonicStage software? Will I still have to use SS to get MP3's from my computer onto my NW-A3000? Or can I just use the 3rd party programs to transfer MP3 files? I have a huge collection, and I was wondering if I should start importing my music library into SS or WMP, as Sony is moving towards some kind of Windows Media platform. Does that mean that eventually I can move MP3's directly from WMP to my NW-A3000? Unless there's a plugin or something I missed, I just tried synching some MP3's with WMP11 and it didn't work. I guess the above boils down to these points: 1. Sony is stopping support for SS and ATRAC and moving towards MP3/Windows Media platform 2. How can I transfer music from my computer to my NW-A3000? (SWE, dMC, GYM) 3. Will WMP be able to transfer music to my player in the future? (probably, but only Sony can decide that) Are my assumptions correct? What do you guys do with your music, now that SS is being dropped by the wayside? How do you guys deal with these issues? Again, sorry for not searching more extensively, but it's not in a sticky (as far as I can tell) and the only posts I've seen are the ones that simply confirm that ATRAC and SS are being abandoned. If I ever go to Japan, I'd have to get Japanese Windows and use mora.jp, which uses SS, etc...(headache) lol... I guess I'll deal with that if/when I go there.