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.
Sony has its work cut out: In less than three years, the simple white iPod has undergone four revisions, each time capturing more customers and acclaim with slick designs and ever increasing versatility.
For now, Apple has nothing to fear. Sony’s Network Walkman NW-HD1 is as clunky as its name. The gadget looks great, but it’s ruined by a bizarre insistence on a proprietary file format, a confusing navigation scheme and software that is incredibly frustrating.
And the Sony, which works only on a Windows PC and will be available later this month, costs $399. That’s $100 more than an iPod which can run on either a Windows or Macintosh machine while providing the same 20-gigabyte music capacity. A 40-gigabyte iPod runs $399.
I tested the Sony and a comparable iPod. Both produce excellent sound, and neither skipped a beat as I carried them with me while driving, jogging and puttering around the house.
In a few areas, the Sony came out ahead of the iPod.
The Network Walkman played continuously for 31 hours before its battery required a recharge – that was more than twice as long as the iPod, which lasted 13 hours.
But regardless of a player’s size, capacity, battery life and audio quality, it’s not much fun if the supporting software – on the player and the PC – doesn’t rise to the level of the hardware. That’s the problem with the Network Walkman.
I have a collection of nearly 1,200 MP3 music files that take up about 6 gigabytes on my PC hard drive.
Apple’s iTunes software had no trouble transferring the MP3 files to the iPod, which can also play other formats such as Apple’s Advanced Audio Coding codec and others. In all, it took 12 minutes to transfer all my files.
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.
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