Of course, a continuing negative of current MD offerings (NetMD or Hi-MD) which seem to have been ignored so far are that you are pretty much SOL if you are on a non-PC platform (Linux, Mac).
I love the reliabililty and ease of editing of MD, but it's a dying format and Sony's continual paraoia over copy protection will see its userbase confined to a very small segment of the population compared to MP3. Hi-MD will do little, if anything, to change that, especially at prices at or above offering like iPod.
--mco