b0neman

I think we've got to read the writing on the wall that's been there ever since flash memory came down in price: Disks are dying. CDs, DVDs, HDs, MDs are going to go the way of the dinosaur eventually. Floppies have basically been killed off and except for a few exotic or ancient applications, they are basically useless in today's IT world. DVDs and the new DVD standard whatever that ends up being, will probably make it for another 20 years. I can't see hard drives lasting long once flash or some other memory starts getting cheap and reliable enough to deploy in 10 to 100GB sizes. The party was fun while it lasted. Too bad Sony couldn't get this done right. They freaking **created** portable audio! Some people still say, "walkman" when they mean portable audio device. They didn't take any cues from their Playstation marketing department. If they did, the MDs with all their faults would be the defacto standard instead of ipods. Soooo, no iPod for me(too expensive), but definitely an "eBay-able" item now.

Bought a HiMD NH600D player off Ebay almost a couple weeks after they came out. I then "froogled" for the minidiscs and found them at http://www.jr.com for about 7 bucks a piece. Spent the better part of a week transferring almost my entire library of CDs and MP3s to 4 of those 1gig discs at the low resolution mode in Simple Burner. 180 hours of music for my trips across the world isn't such a bad trade off. Plus since I was listening to the stuff in planes and trains, my ears couldn't really tell that the quality was that bad. Even on the road in my truck, it doesn't make much of a difference. Even though it isn't as "sexy" as an Ipod and the software is still a bit clunky, I love it.

I just got a HiMD player off ebay for really good price and am completely satisified with it. I don't know if anyone else has researched through this site, but SonicStage is not a requirement (err you might just have to install it but you don't have to actually run it) to get MP3's onto your MD player. I had a MZ505 before this and was horrified at the crappy SonicStage stuff and knew there had to be an alternative. Eff SonicStage! A combination of daemontools/M3U2SB/SimpleBurner turns your computer into an mp3 machine. Now, it is some work and more than a bit of baby sitting that has to be done to get mp3 into an "album" form that SimpleBurner can use but in the end it is as elegant a solution as any. FAULTS but not Really... I don't have a need for lossless playback of mp3s as this is a travel/car companion and you're screwed in those situations as far as acoustic quality. So, HI-LP is wonderful for me. Battery life in the double digits from a single battery beats just about every other player out there. No power adapter is no problem if you use rechargables plus the rechargables get longer life. I don't personally have a need for line-in recording from this thing but I've heard that others have used these units for years and are quite happy. If you're recording live music, maybe a multitrack unit may be more your speed. Sony, Soni, Sonie, has done it again... NOT Why Sony has no clue about marketing these things properly in the US is beyond me. They have absolutely crushed the competition in the video game console "wars." They *INVENTED* the portable audio craze. Who didn't want a WalkMan way back when? Why is the HiMD media unavailable? It all just doesn't make sense. The SonicStage software, the user interface on the units themselves and the just plain dumb unuserfriendliness of these things baffles me as well since the PS2 is something that even a 4 year old can master in a matter of minutes. Bottom Line If you want it, you can pry my HiMD player off my cold dead fingers!