returned my 600D

[mshadel]

Well, I've packed up my 600D and returned it. As much as I wanted to love the Hi-MD format, I just had too many gripes to support Sony with my consumer dollars. Ultimately Hi-MD proved to be great hardware hopelessly crippled by restrictive software. Well, and a few other problems too...

1. SonicStage is slow, poorly designed, and extremely unreliable. I rebooted my machine dozens of times after SonicSatge crashes. Half the time it wouldn't recognize my 600D when it was plugged in. Often the program would close mid-transfer for no apparent reason. When the software was running, it regularly consumed close to 100 percent of the processor. Even when it wasn't my wife reported seeing SonicStage processes running wild in the process list. There's no excuse for this. Sony has the time and budget to make reliable software. Their priority is clearly DRM enforcement over usability.

2. SonicStage is my only choice to transfer music. There are no 3rd party apps available, no independant developer community, no mac or unix support, and no hope for them in the future. (except for mac support)

3. ATRAC is inadequate. The new ATRAC3+ only comes in 256k, 64k, and 56k. There's no VBR. There's no mono support. There's no compressed lossless. Why? Competing codecs have had these options for years.

4. Hi-MD media is still not yet available. Sure, this problem will be solved in time. But Sony won't say when. Why pay a premium to early-adopt their hardware if I can't use it? Reformatted MDs are cool but not enough. 2 256k albums on one disc is not revolutionary.

5. The 600D feels cheap. The body is made of plastic. The USB port is covered with a rubber plug that stopped fitting snugly after the first week. The player is thick. What's worse, on the $500 top-end models don't allow data transfer from the charging cradle!

6. No upload of personal recordings to a usable format (WAV). Sure, they're promsied a converter for the Fall. Converting to WAV is not rocket science. Waiting for months for something this simple makes me think their software development departments are choked with beaurocracy.

But hey, it wasn't all bad. In fact, Hi-MD has some EXCELLENT qualities, such as:

1. 1GB media for around $3/each! They'll be available in stores some day. That is an incredible cost per MB. For comparison, a 1GB CF card costs at least $135. Hi-MD would be a PERFECT replacement for the floppy disc. They're small, rugged, inexpensive, and higher capacity that a CDRW.

2. Excellent battery life, on a regularly available NiMH AA. Apple could learn a lesson from this. Proprietary batteries are a BIG turn off.

3. Good size, durability, and skip protection compared to a portable CD player.

Sony has clearly spent some big bucks coming up with a great format. Here's they should do to make Hi-MD ubiquitous rather than a niche market:

1. Keep the DRM for ATRAC, but support non-DRM'd mp3s as well. At this point, mp3 is a standard. All their competetors support it. They need to get over their fear of non-DRM'd music.

2. Allow music to be drag-and-dropped via the Windows (or Mac) Explorer onto MDs for playback in a portable player.

3. Make an inexpensive MD data drive for the PC. Target it for data storage (like the floppy) but allow music to be copied over and played back on the portables. If this ever happened I would be on the streets selling 'I Love MD' T-shirts the next day.

4. License the MD technology to other companies. What if you could use $3 minidiscs as storage in a PDA? In a digital camera? There is a huge amount of potential here.

In summary, these last few weeks have made me believe that Sony no longer puts their customers first. When companies get arrogant, they die. I predict that unless they have a major reversal of corporate policy they'll have 1/10th of their current market share in ten years.

[Fast Eddie]

1. SonicStage is slow, poorly designed, and extremely unreliable. I rebooted my machine dozens of times after SonicSatge crashes. Half the time it wouldn't recognize my 600D when it was plugged in. Often the program would close mid-transfer for no apparent reason. When the software was running, it regularly consumed close to 100 percent of the processor. Even when it wasn't my wife reported seeing SonicStage processes running wild in the process list. There's no excuse for this. Sony has the time and budget to make reliable software. Their priority is clearly DRM enforcement over usability.  

2. SonicStage is my only choice to transfer music. There are no 3rd party apps available, no independant developer community, no mac or unix support, and no hope for them in the future. (except for mac support)

Have to disagree here. I've had no problems or crashes with the SS software. My PC always recognises the device as does SS. I don't think it's particularly slow. It's no slower than iTunes for example.

As to your gripe about the media, well I bought 4 1GB discs last week from audiocubes.com

Another thing. The rubbber plug over the USB port still fits fine on miy 600D after 3 weeks. Have you been mistreating yours?

Yes, it's a plastic design, but I don't have any problems with it at all.

I really like it. I'm not interested in uploading my own recordings (like many others I'd guess) so that's no loss to me.

It's a great unit, that stores a lot of music and data. Does what it says on the box very well IMO. :grin: