Dimitri

Can't rip @352? What's the point of it then?

This measurement technique is industry standard. Nobody reports the windows size, just the theoretical size. So no, Sony isn't cheating us anymore than any other company with products dealing in capacities.

If you don't specify folders (as in using vaio transfer) it will generate folders based on album tag data. If you use SS, you can manually create folders and drop songs into them. Then you will have the option of navigating on tag data (artist -> album -< etc) or navigating by folder names. This is the only option you really have as playlists cannot be created on the computer to synch to the vaio. You can create up to 5 favorite lists from the vaio itself, though, but this can be cumbersome if things aren't organized well.

That may be true for discontinued models (like the HD3) but for current models the two are pretty close. In fact, ipods are generally a better value for capacity/features. HD5 is $279 retail but for $20 more you get 50% more capacity, much larger/colour screen, more features, better software, lossless playback, etc. Less battery life and lack of gapless are its two biggest cons, though.

The player will use tag data to order the tracks by track# in my experience. If the mp3 ID tags are correct, SonicStage should preserve them. You can test this out by downloading the Connect player and try importing your mp3 collection into it. If the track#'s are preserved, then you shouldn't have any problems once you buy the HD5.

1) Tough to say, but ATRAC3+ 192Kbps is playable on the pocket, so you may want to try that one out. The next one down is ATRAC3 132Kbps but personally I don't think it's as good as 192 mp3. 2) see above. 3) Yes, you can assign album art to any type of file that's compatible with SonicStage. 4) I don't know of a way to do this. You can mass convert your library in SonicStage by highlighting all music files and choosing convert but then you'll have to re-transfer them back to the pocket player. In the end, I don't see much benefit in converting your mp3 files. You may squeeze a couple of hours more out of your battery life, but that's at the cost of quality since you'd be compressing an already compressed format even further.

1.) Lyrics only work for ATRAC files. You can right click a song, go to properties and there should be a lyrics tab where you can type or paste in the lyrics for that song. Then transfer the song to the unit and during playback you should be able to view them via the lyrics icon. 2.) Yes. The unit never fully shuts off even when off. This is why it has such a short startup time. In the off position, the battery will continue to drain and usually be drained within a week or so. Best to keep it on the charger during idle time. 3.) ATRAC3+ 256kbps is arguably the best quality the unit can play, though if you prefer the sound of a higher bitrate mp3, that may sound even better. (VBR->320kbps).

Yeah, my main gripe with the player is the laggy navigation, at least when compared to other hard drive players. Oops, that should've read December2004 for the firmware upgrade. The other gripe is the headphone amp seems slightly weaker than even Sony's MD units. Not enough to cause any problems since I generally only use it in the car and at work. The great screen and gapless playback really sold it for me, though.

Yes, this player is laggy for navigation. Believe it or not, it was actually worse before the firmware update in December2003. I just crank the vol full and set to no EQ and use the headphone jack for line-out without the dock. Works great in the car but unsure if that's acceptable for an amp. As for your main issue: I always have albums assigned but I have a number of albums titled 'Greatest Hits'. If I go into an Artist who has a greatest hits album, all other artists' greatest hits albums' songs are thrown in the mix. So my issue was much like yours except instead of having the common group name being blank, they were titled the same. Every conceptual group that doesn't have a unique name assigned to album/group will be jumbled together even if they are different artists, when trying to browse by artist. It's a bug with the player itself, not SonicStage, and don't hold your breath for Sony to fix it either. EDIT: Forgot to add, my way around it was to title each greatest hits name with the artists' name in front of it to be unique. Yours may be to slap the artists' names on the album field to ensure they are unique.

For like bitrates, I found ATRAC to be more energy efficient. Comparing use of my lame vbr files (~200kbps) versus ATRAC Hi-SP (256kbps) there was not much of a difference on my Vaio, perhaps because of the additional hard drive usage on the larger Hi-SP files? Your HD5 has double the battery life than my Vaio so maybe this isn't much of an issue for you.

I would do what he^ said, though you may want to do a blind test of lame vbr vs. Hi-SP to make sure one doesn't sound better to you. I do think Sony's hardware mp3 decoders aren't quite on par. Personally, I thought mp3's sounded slightly better on the wife's ipod than on my vaio pocket, though they do still sound good. If gapless is important, then Atrac it is. If not, and both sound good to your ears, stick with mp3 for compatibility purposes.

Looking back at it, it probably is the cradle.

Except that it's on the bottom.

Have you tried resetting the unit per the reset button yet?

I would be very surprised to see another Vaio pocket model. I would think Sony considered that a failure. The units only really sold well when they were priced below $300, and you can bet Sony was taking a loss at that price! Plus the confusion created by having a non-walkman music player was probably considered a mistake. It's a shame, though.

Thanks!

What about an orange RH10?

I love my Vaio so much I have twins.