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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Thursday, August 05, 2004

Apple stays on top: iPod superior to Sony's new digital Walkman

Associated Press: "A quarter century after Sony Corp. first shipped the legendary Walkman personal stereo, the electronics giant is launching a high-tech model that aims to topple Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod as today's leading digital music player and status symbol. For now, Apple has nothing to fear. The Sony, which works only on a Windows PC and will be available later this month, costs $399 - $100 more than an iPod which can run on either a Windows or Macintosh machine while providing the same 20-gigabyte music capacity. Both produce excellent sound, and neither skipped a beat as I carried them with me while driving, jogging and puttering around the house. The Network Walkman played continuously for 31 hours before its battery required a recharge - more than twice as long as the iPod, which lasted 13 hours. The Sony also is physically smaller than the iPod, though not by much ... The Network Walkman only plays Sony's own ATRAC3 and ATRAC3plus formats. Before each song transferred, it had to be converted. The process took nearly seven hours ... In all, [iTunes] took 12 minutes to transfer all my files [to the iPod]."

Sigh.

A couple of obvious comments here.

First, the iPod is indeed the more desirable device, mostly because of Sony's braindead decision to only support the bogus ATRAC3 format.

However.

Second, if your entire music collection is in WMA format, and you decide to buy an iPod and use iTunes, this combination will indeed also take several hours to transcode and transfer your music collection to the device. Just like the Sony.

The difference, of course, is that Sony is hobbling its device unnecessarily. Stupid.

[ Posted at 11:28 AM | Permalink ]