Gadget-hunting: update

[tamaranth]

Still quite determined to get a smaller, lighter, less-stealable MP3 player, and still charmed by the Sony NZ-E170.

But apparently Microsoft aren't:

from New Scientist

Microsoft slams Sony

SONY's PR people recently invited journalists to try one of the latest Walkmans, a player the size of a packet of chewing gum that manages to contain a battery, a socket for headphones and 1 gigabyte of memory that can store a stack of CDs.

The music has to be squirted into the Walkman from a PC, using Sony's SonicStage software. So we duly installed the software on our PC and connected the Walkman to the PC's USB socket as instructed. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Sometimes the computer crashed, sometimes not.

Then up on screen came a Microsoft error message. We can only speculate on the acrimony of the dialogue between Sony and Microsoft that produced this message, because we have never seen one like it: "Error Caused By Sony Corporation: No Specific Solution Found...An analyst at Microsoft has investigated this problem and determined that an unknown error occurred in OpenMG-SonicStage Jukebox. This software was created by Sony Corporation:Microsoft has researched this problem with Sony Corporation, and they do not currently have a solution for the problem".

Little doubt there: Microsoft thinks Sony was to blame. So we contacted Sony to ask if there was a solution yet. A technical expert was delegated to talk. "We hadn't seen the Microsoft message," he confessed. "I wasn't aware of any problems and our customer information line isn't aware of any either. And if Microsoft says there isn't a solution, then presumably there isn't one".

Call us technologically challenged, but we are now rather at a loss what to do next.

Comments

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

that's a very standard Windows error reporting error message; it's the legally approved way of saying 'not Windows crashing! not me! I didn't break it! it was him, mum!' It doesn't imply joint rummaging into code; it means 'we know this crashes because we get the error reports, we told Sony about them, Sony didn't have a fix'. They'll have gone to Sony US or Sony Corp - Sony UK might easily not get told anything.

OpenMG is a pile of *crap* - nasty interface, nasty copy protection in earlier versions and I wouldn't trust it to sit the right way on a lavatory. The physical design of the player looks cute but personally I'd make sure you can use Windows Media Player or iTunes to fill it up if you find OpenMG is a pain in the keister...