mgillespie

Those are all juste excuses. If Sony REALLY wanted to sort out problems, then the red tape can be cast aside. Perhaps a public (or private) beta program to test weekly builds of connect. At the moment, anything is better than the crap we currently have.

Doing a quickfix on SonicStage would be a good shortterm solution, if they could get something running in a couple of weeks or so, perhaps beta it, with willing voluenteers from here (I would be more than willing to try ANYTHING compared to what I have right now..). That may take the pressure off, and allow Sony to get Connect V2 done right, and repair the serious damage this faisco has done. They could also create a Software SDK for the NW-A series, like Creative have been doing for many years, to allow developers to create their own player management software. How cool would that be? (It would more than make up for the damage that has been caused so far, in my books).

I know why, so they can sell extra leads, and make more cash out of us... Scumsuckers..

SonicStage is pretty poor, the only reason people use it, is that it's not as poor as Connect!! GYM has serious limitations. THe best thing Sony could do, is offer a SDK, so developers can do their own stuff. Perhaps a Walkman SDK and a Connect Store SDK... We can then create our ideal feature set....

And.... I have enabled AutoUpdate, and see nothing... Wind Up???

Is this documented anywhere? I have 2x PC's and found out the hard way about this stipid rule. In 2006, can it really be true that you cannot "Connect" (pun) your NW-A to multiple PC's? That's pretty laughable, as I don't know of a single MP3 player aside from Sony that has this dumb limitation... They have a mammoth job to catch up with Apple, and sticking to their prioritery formats, codecs and transfer methods is simply going to kill them. Just adopt "Plays For Sure", and be done with it...

If it does, I want a refund for ArtistLink, Top 100, and Play History features, as they don't work at all with SonicStage (and barely work with Connect). Perhaps if they pay me £70, for the 3 advertised features which are no longer features.... Personally, I would say the exact opposite. Connect is the worst, most bug ridden, and unintuitive software from ANY manufacturer. For Decent Sony software, you have to look at either bought in products (Sonic Foundry for example), or Maddisson Studios products (Sony division responsble for the excellent V1 PSP Media Manager). It's been well over a month since the last Connect "bug fix" (which fixed none of my issues), with nothing on the horizon. Why not release a beta NOW, so we can provide feedback. Anything has got to be better than the pre-Alpha release we currently have.

I have a clean install, and Connect takes almost 3 minutes to open up, and another 5 to settle down, before I can do anything useful. 8 MINUTES. On a AMD 3500+ with 1GB of RAM. Quality software... (not). My content is located on a server, connected via a wireless (54G) link. I can understand the slow transfers, as it has to transfer across the wifi, but the startup is no excuse...

OK, finally sussed it out. Hardly the most intuitive method going to transfer plalists, but U have frinally managed to transfer one I found the playlist in with the Bookmarks. What on earth ARE bookmarks then, if they are not playlists? Some bugs I have encountered in Connect, when trying to transfer playlists. 1/ Some playlists simply refuse to ever appeat in Connect, using Ctrl+I, or dropping in. 2/ Some tracks are missing from the playlist, when it's transferred to the player, even thou the music IS on the device. Have they been removed? Why?

When you say. they were "on the player", where did you find the playlist? Was it listed in the same place as where the bookmarks are?

I have quite a few favorites and compilation Playlists in M3U format, but I cannot figure out how to transfer them to my NV-A3000 I have tried following the text in the FAQ, but all this seems to do, is transfer the tracks IN the playlist (which already exist on the device), it does not transfer the playlist itself. I also don't understand how playlists differ from bookmarks. I really hope the 5 fixed name bookmark lists are not my only means of creating "regular" playlists. This would finally make me take the unit back. (with the Connect fiasco), as I simply cannot live without unlimited amounts of playlists that I can create and name as I wish. It's slowly dawning on me, how limited the NW-A3000 actually is, my 3 year old Creative Labs 80GB Jukebox 3 has more features than the NW-A3000. :-(

It seems amonst all the crap Sony software (Connect, Vaio, SonicStage etc), there is 1 single Sony software development team that CAN write decent software. Has anyone seen the PSP Media Manager? Fantasic bit of software for converting and transferring video, audio, feeds and other content to the Sony PSP, even the 1.0 release was pretty much bug free, full functionalty, easy to use, fast... (basically everything that Connect is not). I just wish Sony had got them to do the software for the NW-A1000/3000 It would have been something decent.

Sony have announced at CES, that the A1000 and A3000 units will be launched in the US, when they feel the software is ready. Why did they launch the units in Europe, when by their own admitance, that the software is not ready for prime time? Do Sony care about their European customers? I don't think so. My support call on my NW-A3000, regarding the slew of problems with Connect, has fallen by the wayside, even though I have fully documented the problems I am having, and done all the requested diagnostics that Sony have requested. Perhaps they have no solutions? Would be nice if they told me this, rather than hoping I give up contacting them. If anyone from Sony is reading this, I would like to know how much they will be paying me, for beta testing their Connect software, ready for it's US launch???? This is how it feels like I have been treated.

http://www.stoneaudio.co.uk/stoneaudio/pro...sp?product=1766

I have a silicon case, it's OK, but you struggle to connect the sync lead, and it does not fit in the cradle :-) I assume these problems will also apply to the other cases. The Silicon one, I would have expected the Sony design team to take these things into considerationt thou.

Certainly playback history, and perhaps Top 100 (not sure, as I have not used SOnicStage for this reason). I want Connect FIXED.. Going to SonicStage is a cop-out...

Unfortunatly, using SonicStage, you don't get the full functionality of the player, like ArtistLink etc.

Does this hack stick, even after a firmware update?

Stupid question, how does Connect Player know that the unit can now do WMA support? It used to have to transcode WMA, now it only has to transfer it. Does Connect negioate the devices capabilities on connection? If so Connect must have already been WMA aware.

It applies to ANY album, even box sets. I used my free Connect album on a £34.99 5 CD box set!!! Hope it helps someone choose....

Connect is absolutelty unusable for me. On my main PC, it's a massive CPU hog, and takes about 7 minutes to start. It then consumes about 700MB of system memory. My main desktop PC, it shows no CD drives, so I am unable to rip any music from CD, even though there are 2 CDdrives int he PC. If I connect the NW-A3000 to my lapop, that shows a CD Drive, performance is very poor on this also. I CAN rip music on this, but having 2PC's sharing 1 NW-A3000 does not work, it simply corrupts the devices music database, all the history and favorites information needs to be rebuilt (on the desktop PC). I am on the verge of taking it back. Great hardware, absolutely horrendous software....

I got some WMA files that won't transcode, but have always played perfectly everywhere else. I think it's buggy Connect software (again).

The simple reason the NWA-1000 and 3000 have not been released, is that US customers simply would not accept the problems with Connect software has. EU customers are unwilling beta testers...

So my entire collection of music is not compatible with Artist-Link, unless I re-RIP them using the Sony software, I don't recall seeing that mentioned anywhere in the documentation. The more I own the NW-A3000, the more nasty suprises I ams tarting to discover. Is there any 3rd party utility to gather CDDB2 information and automatically store it in the files?

Yep, got my voucher, looked for ages, but everything I wanted was not available on Connect. Pretty poor show Sony. Even some stuff from Sony Records was not on there. (why is AC/DC back catalog not there, they are on the Sony label....)