After recently agonising over what to by my partner for his birthday I finally settled on this and was quite happy that I did. On opening the box, we were confronted by a little purple marvel that looks likr nothing else. It looks very well designed- and it is, very intuitively layed out and has a beautiful liquid-like sheen to it. On turning this little wonder of technology on, we were confronted by a stunning OLED display. Some thing quite difficult to describe properly in words, but if pushed, I'd have to describe it as organic. The words, icons and images are just........ there. Almost as if no screen exsists at all. We also discovered that there are 3 pre-loaded MP3 tracks on the player- admittedly they aren't that great but they go to show how good the sound quality on this player really is. I would go so far to say that the range of sound is better that the iPod equivalent (the nano). We decided to try the player out with our own music and this is where the problems began. The driver CD-ROM that comes with the player is truly shocking. Not in the slightest bit easy or intuitive- the total opposite of the player. After three attempts at installing everything and being faced with the dialogue box claiming "installation terminated" we decided just to install SonicStage as a single programme. Success! Although this was (very) short lived. Out of around 100 songs we were informed that nearly 75 of them couldn't be used. OK, so we'll have a look at the instruction manual. NOTHING. The manual proper is on the blasted CD-ROM that can't for the love of God be installed!!! So, almost a week later, we still can't figure it out. Somehow, we've managed to put more tracks on it. But this player won't sync with Windows Media Player (up to version 10) either. In fairness, once you got the tracks on there that you want, the Sony machine is amazing. Good sound quality, excellent menu's and jaw-dropping good looks. It has more style and sound quality than an iPod but is a bit heavier and a fair bit thicker. A word of advice. Buy some form of carry case, this player wil scratch up easily without it. Avoid the Sony Speaker Dock like a bad cold though. £100 buy's you second rate tinny speakers, with all the controls on the back where you can't get to them. The sound quality is much like Sony's £14.99 passive speakers from Argos. Plus, they don't match the design or colour of ANY of this series of Sony MP3 HDD players.
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Nice review. Just a quick note: I think the reason you haven't (yet) got more VHs is because of the paragraphing structure you've used. Many Ciao-ers delight in clear paragraphing. ;> Just put an empty line in between each section, and I think your ratings might come up a bit. :>
rocksthatkill 15.10.2006 15:50
don't think i would have rated this with 4 stars by the sound of your review, regarding the problems you had getting songs on there...Nick
Oct 15th, 2006
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