Ascariss

the A3000 is not being made anymore I think, in canada it is no longer sold, and sony UK doesn't have it on their website for a while. I am sure there are some units still left but not directly from sony or suppliers. here is the thread I was looking for: http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1543 The A2000 went on sale in dec at the sony store, well that is when units arrived, first week of dec. a 4-5 month product is a bit poor for sony since if a replacement is due this fall/winter (most likely the latter for christmas) then sony will be without a DAP in the high capacity area to combat apple. anyways, I would wait on your end and not buy a A3000 now.

the 35 battery life is with atrac3+ at 64kbps which there is no way I would listen to that. The 20 gig drive can hold a lot more songs than both the A1200 and A1000 combined so disregard that info on the site. In the end it all matters how you encide the songs and how large they are. The battery life on the A3000 is longer than the smaller A1000/1200 for sure though. I should mention the A3000 is a lot larger than it appears in pictures, I was a bit surprised when I bought mine after using the A1000 for 2 weeks.

Why not just transfer the mp3 files? that is what i do, the program will just transfer them as mp3s with a layer of protection, which gives them an OMA file ending. I wouldn't recommend converting mp3 to atrac, unless u are rippping cds directly to atrac?

Congrats on the purchase, I am sure you will be happy with the A1000. I would recommend trying to use connect player first since it is the easiest to use with the NW series and if CP works fine on your PC don't go back to sonicstage, unless you already have that installed disregard that above advice, The lighting conditions determine the colour like bogon mentioned, I've held the violet one and it can appear bluish in colour or a purple one as you photographed. My silver units themselves look black in darker light, to a chrome, and then silver depending on the light, so in a way it can change colours lol. Do please post your opinions and criticisms of the player when you get a good feel and use of it for a week or so. if you have any questions that have not been answered already on the forums, don't hesitate to ask.

the article states that flash prices have fallen a bit lately so this might lower the prices of flash mp3 players. if you need a high capacity, mp3 player now, sony has none on offer currently, highest is 30 gig HD5 i believe. I will most likely go for a flash player in the future, at least 8 gigs or so since I've come to realize that HDD is not the way to go for a good mp3 player. i've have both the a1000 and a3000 and prefer the smaller device myself since it is much lighter, but battery life is a lot less. If sony would replace the hdd with flash, I would keep the a1000 hands down.

the new article on the front page states sony is planning some new unit, so I would wait if I were you.

Beethovenian, it saddens me when a conpany like sony is behind much smaller firms such as apple and creative. I have no complaints about the software, Connect player is great and I would rather use that than sonicstage and find it much easier than itunes. the hardware is the problem. Ya I agree on the LCD, give me a colour one than OLED any day, there are not many sunny days in vancouver, but sometimes in normal light it's almost impossible to read the screen. sony came too late to the mp3 player market, instead opting for the minidisc. Perhaps if sony would persued flash and hdd players from the start when they just began coming out, maybe we wouldn't ba having this discussion.

I wouldn't get your hopes up with anything amazing from sony, their music arm is what is preventing their mp3 player line from being amazing, since copyright issues are one of the issues. the zune will not make a huge impact on apple's sales and although it should be a good mp3 player. sony may have created the market but that doesn't mean they will be able to dominate it again. I already posted what the chip in the nw series can do but sony decided against the options. instead they released a mediocre product with limited options and great sound quality, This doesn't sell a mp3 player and with the hdd units not being sold in the US, a major market, it only shows what sony thought of the nw hdd units, not highly. the name should be sinple, sony walkman, nothing more nothing less, why complcate things with additional #s and letters? pointless. A colour screen, ease of navigation, easy transfer and control music from pc to device, good sound quality, good battery life, easy playlists, on the go playlists, and multiple codec and format support. Video is sadly a must now for hdd type of mp3 players, since most the major brands have that ability. sandisk already has an 8 gig flash player coming this fall! creative has a 60 gig visionM coming as well and sony is dishing out crappy flash players up to 2 gigs and poor software, Sure if the flash players supported more formats and possibly video, sony could have something there, but sadly nope. It takes a long time to get up to the #1 spot in the mp3 biz and keeping it takes new products with great new features ahead of the compeition. What did sony has that was great in the current HDD units? artist link which rarely worked and was just worthless garbage, a playlist that ranks which songs you play the most and then "predicts" what you want to hear, uhm no, that is just crap as well. Let's see a slow start up and slower navigation. bah, the NW series will most likely be my last sony mp3 player for a long time, since if sony wants to beat the competition they need to release for the christmas season no Q1 2007! perhaps once people stop buying sony's crappy mp3 players, they will realize they need to revamp the line and give it a major makeover.

a bit late as always from sony, will most likely be a generation behind the products on the market by then.

don't use the bookmarks they are poor. if you use winamp, then make a playlist there, save it, and then import it into connect player, then transfer the playlist over to the unit, any songs not on the device will be moved over automativally.

This will fail and will not put a dent into Ipod sales, not even a scratch. In the end, apple has become what they fought against in the 80s and 90s, a huge corporate firm with a monopoly. perhaps MS or sony should make a commercial like apple once did of the mac being thrown at the giant screen?

i don't use connect site for music since its not offered in canada. I wouldn't use even if it was, I prefer mp3 sites that offer better music, and at higher bitrates and or even eave. buying off corporate sites is rip in my view, since you are usually stuck with one device to transfer it to, ipod, walkmanm etc.

Will this work wit hteh HDD based players?

uhm I think you are confusing currencies here €179 euros is 257 canadian dollars while 199.99 canadian, is 138 Euros. and yes this is a new one too.

I"d say wait. christmas is less than 6 months away now.

A simple search of the forum would yield the info right away. http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1437 one the A1000/1200 is smaller in size than the A3000, so no swap there, the A3000 could take larger drives but they won't work. as well you can read some info I found out http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?...ic=1818&hl= enjoy.

Not had this problem, I turned off all the web related stuff for artist link on mine and never had this happen.

songs don't get deleted by themselves ever, no computer is that clever to remive them, there has to be some order from the user to remove them. I can think of only a few reasons why this would occur. 1. you selected the songs to be deleted from the device on the device. 2. songs went missing from the playlists on the pc if you used one. 3. songs were removed from the library and they will be deleted from the device as well. did you do anything to the database on the device or in the library?

Hmm, I would also suggest playing around with the EQ, it provides rather lovely results and makes the songs play much more better. It all depends on the genre of music you listen to, since that will effect what you need to set the EQ to.

Agreed, I am not leaving CP, and will most likely keep it as long as I can, and wait until sony releases a new program and new mp3 players.

The A1000 is a bit more flimsier than the A3000, I have both and can easily tell you the A3000 feels more solidly built.

who uses low bitrate songs on a 20 gig device? I honestly can't go believe 192 mp3, since I can hear the difference in quality. I've listened to the hd5 vs a3000 here, friend has one, and I personally like the A3000's sound much more, clearer and better. if you are going to use lower bitrates in your mp3 player, might as well get an ipod.

I think you mean mp3 320? I don't think there is mp3 352 in connect player, correct me if I am wrong. I use anywhere from mp3 192 to mp3 320 and the inbetween, mp3 256 and mp3 vbr. Majority of my songs are now 320 mp3 and I can't really say anything bad about the quality, it's quite good. I don't like atrac for 2 reasons. takes time to re encode, which is bad, since going from lossy format to another lossy format is just stupid, and second, I don't want a second duplicate collection of my mp3s on the harddrive, waste of space. I don't want to delete my mp3s, Some delete the mp3s or source songs that are encoded into atrac, but I paid for a lot of my mp3s, and I like to have them on my harddrive. So honestly, I would recommend mp3 as the better choice, since no need to re encode to atrac which saves time when transferring over files. But if you need better battery life and gapless playback for for the higher atrac codec, or lower one for longer battery life. It all depends what you want and need.

"Microsoft is in line for a fine of $2.51 million per day backdated to December 15th 2004 for failing to meet the terms of the EU commission's ruling." if my math is right, that is 562 days? so 14.1062 billion?

I am not sure why you didn't go back to the store and show them this, they would have replaced it automatically.