Rumz

I didn't mean to dismiss the absence of a lanyard... the point is that the reviewer writes as if it were a deal breaker that there's no lanyard. It's also interesting that you can get the 1GB shuffle cheaper than any of Sony's current 1GB players, even if all Sony's players have better battery life and a screen-- originally Sony's basic 1GB player (the E107) was priced to compete with the Shuffle. I agree about the transfer speeds-- it's painfully slow to transfer songs to my E107 compared to transferring to the Vaio Pocket. Fortunately there's not as much space to fill

Yes I definitely get some looks with this player-- the tech savy, anyways, stop and say "what's THAT?" Because they recognize the Sony name and most of all that it's NOT an iPod They've never seen these little known-wonders before. I did spring for a second cradle for this thing so as to have one stationary at the computer and another for moving around (I know-- $70+ for a cradle is steep) and do quite enjoy hooking the Pocket up to external stereos. Of course, everyone asks if it can play video because they know my phone can. If only Sony were to continue the Vaio Pocket line... they could improve the way the player accesses the hard drive and throw in mp4 video playback I suppose that would compete with the PSP a bit though, huh...

I do think it's a bit silly that not all the colors are available in the U.S. for each flavor (IE azure blue 1GB / E507). I bet they could sell more if they did offer other colors (I'd have an e407 by now for sure!)

Oh the blister packaging... lethal weapons for sure! (just about killed myself opening a cordless phone once... why, WHY?) I mean, sure these little things can enhance the overall experience of *opening* your new toy, but come on... do we really care once we've got it and we're playing with it? Blister what? I mean, I've always been told nothing worth having was easy to get at

LOL. Yes... the LANYARD. That's the whole reason I ever wanted a flash player. That's it, no wonderful lanyard, no E507 for me.

Just signed up for the forum-- thank you Chris for taking the initiative to fill the void on the Internet that was left by a lack of Atrac device forum. This is what I've wanted for some time now I simply thought I'd start a thread about the Vaio Pocket for general discussion. I've been using this thing since December 04 when Ishi seduced me into buying one And I love it. Favorite of any DAP I've ever owned. Gapless, 40 gigs, color screen, adequate battery life, and of course of importance to me is that it sounds great. No complaints about the sound... handles mp3s beautifully, etc. I so far have been using Shure E3cs, MDR-D66SL eggos, and even some Koss KSC75s with it-- all sound great on it. The Pocket has that little extra oomph in the lower range that my E3c needs. I'm very satisfied... It's a little sad this may be an orphan product... I can only dream of Sony releasing another firmware update for it to fix some things, it seems to have potential compared to other players in the firmware upgrade department. Now a little something you might laugh at: Since I'm apprehensive of re-initializing the Vaio Pocket upon install of a later version of SonicStage, I've yet to upgrade... Laugh at my laziness: I still use Sonic Stage 2.3 and am content to use atrac3plus 256k for gapless recordings and LAME mp3s for most everything else. Does what I need and I don't want to re-load 20 gigs worth of music back onto my Pocket. =P Yes, I'm lazy... Anyhow, it's been fun to watch as the Pocket has become more affordable recently and gained some more fans. Who else loves their Pocket? What headphones do you use with your Pocket? How often do you use it? (In comparison to other DAPs you may have, if you have them-- only time I don't use the Pocket is at the gym... have an NW-E107 for that).