I got the NW-HD1 about 2 weeks ago. And at first I was pretty down on the whole ATRAC conversion. Its not too back considering it has only taken down a fraction of the space my mp3s did. My biggest complaint is not being able to create playlists. I have a lot of music already loaded separated by folder "albums" like 90s, 80s, Oldies, Big Band. The only thing is that I cannot preselect songs and store several playlists to play only those selected songs. You can shuffle within a folder "album", or across the whole unit. It does allow you to bookmark songs, but even that keeps all bookmarked songs together, and not separate lists. The problem is that I would like to hear a preselected rap playlist when I exercise, industrial to driving, and some Sinatra/Dean/and Billie to relax.
If the mp3 format is supports the playlists it would be a great improvement. What good is carring all the songs if you have to constantly create and delete bookmarks of songs based on your activities. Having several playlists created and ready to go at my request would be awesome.