Stupor

One would expect you to say "I wil never buy ANYTHING from Sony again, ever!@!$!%#, TV, DVD, CD, NOTHING!" Your tempers are pretty good(or you are a MD fanboy).

I read somewhere that that's just the way sony programmed its "random" setting (so everyone has that problem). Go figure. They spend tonnes of money to make the player and disc, and pay no attention to the software and batteries.

You might be able to import and play the files in SS, but for sure you won't be able to transfer them to portable players. You'll have to burn them to CDs and import. I'm not sure if you can burn them to virtual-CDs or if they can only be burned to real CDs (which would be the REAL hassle, of course). Either way, you WILL have to re-name all the tracks. The handful of tracks you recorded through Realplayer can be imported with all the name tags intact. Merit of the story - Don't buy music online unless you are a Sony/Apple groupie and will stick by Walkman/iPod no matter what happens. For everyone else, just buy the damn CD.

Key Kurisu, I've just downloaded SS 2.3 from your link. I have a few questions: -Does it contain Connect? -Is it any better than SS 2.0 for normal NetMD usage? -How is it better for uploading recordings?

Nah, he's scaring you. You won't have to go cook dinner while the transfer goes on. The time spent transcoding is noticeable, but overall the speed is still pretty fast. A 5MB mp3 file takes about ~10 seconds to transfer on my computer (AMD XP 3000/512MB) Don't bother with that, since you want an easy way to do it. SS is far from the best, but it is still stable enough for most uses. I have not had any real trouble from it. The stupid DRM scheme is kinda annoying, but it's not a killer for me. If you want to be able to tranfer your music from one computer to another, find an mp3 player instead! You cannot do it with NetMD or HiMD! But if you don't really need that then MD players are okay.

This is not relevant, but I have to say, R-1 is BUTT-UGLY You HAVE to agree with me on that.

Don't buy a minidisc player. Neither 520 nor 610 are HiMDs, they can only use the 80-minute normal minidiscs. You will have to buy rechargeable batteries separately, as most units don't come with rechargeables ones (except the high-end ones, but their rechargeables are crap, forcing you to buy expensive, proprietory Sony ones) For most people, a flash player would be better than a minidisc. Here's why: -all minidisc units require you to convert music to ATRAC format, slowing the process (which is slow to begin with since minidiscs can't write that fast) and wrapping it in a nice blanket of DRM so you can't tranfer it to a second computer -they are pretty expensive compared to flash players -a minidisc at LP2 can hold a bit more than 128 MB of mp3 (128kbps), and at LP4 it can hold a bit more than 256 of mp3 (in both cases transcoded to ATRAC) not bad but not great either, especially since LP4 really makes the music sound bad. -all of the minidiscs "support" it in that they can transcode it to ATRAC, but none have native support (there's a rumour going around that the second generation HiMDs will have it, but they won't be cheap and the earliest you can get them is like October, if the rumour is true) I have the 520 myself, and the only reason I chose it over flash is because of its remote, which is smaller than any flash player and is the only way I can access my player when biking. If a remote is not a priority for you, then there is really no reason for you to get it. As a casual music listener, I highly suggest you go check out some 256/512MB flash players by iRiver and others. They will cost the same/less than a 520 and be much better suited for your uses.