Sunday 8 March 2009

Sony wins by a mile

Posted by speedygeoff on Sunday, March 08, 2009 with
Sony 2gb MP3
I have had an old Mp3 player that lasted me for five years and I felt it was time to upgrade to something newer, lighter, and more contemporary. I bought an iPod shuffle. Big mistake.

(a) I fell in hate with iTunes almost immediately. Not a very advanced bit of software, too restrictive, a pain to convert files into its format, bugs in the area of folder navigation, and if you use it to download files you cannot use the downloads outside of iTunes/iPod. (iTunes is the only music database an iPod can talk to.)

(b) The iPod had the look and feel of a kid's toy.

(c) The iPod broke after three uses and my PC could no longer recognise it. It was dead; deader than dead.

So I went and bought a brand new Sony walkman, the one pictured above. Hurrah! So much easier to use than any iPod, a one year guarantee through JB Hi Fi who I know can be trusted, and some nice features which are exactly what I wanted. And I can load/unload it easily from any data store (except iTunes of course).

And another thing; having used my son's Apple Mac for a week when we were visiting Brisbane last year, and not real impressed with that, I don't think any Apple product will ever be found in my home.

My conclusion is that the iPod is popular only because of clever marketing; not because of quality, that’s for sure.

At least, after all this, I have the choice of several sets of nice earphones now.