Free Technology

Two of the best words used together in the history of technology.

My mother received this $140 MP3 player from a friend of hers. Who apparently couldn't get it to work, got a replacement, and just gave the first one away to a friend "with smart daughters".



It's only a REALLY COOL PLAYER. Slick, great controls, simple and easy to access once you get the hang of the menu layout... it's Shuffle-like in its comparative simplicity, only this MP3 player has a screen. The only complaint I have so far with the player is with the lack of "Delete This Song" option. Other than that it's pretty much wicked sweet.

The software that you have to use with the player, however? Extremely detrimental to the deal. Sony's program developers are SERIOUSLY slacking off. Convoluted and somewhat ambiguous UI, with bad visual design and horrible error reporting methods (read: popups. Not only that, but redundant popups). And even the error reports the program has are flawed: the program reported errors with the file transfer process that never happened. And the transfer time for downloading to the player is only okay if you're looking for the equivalent of a commercial break on your comp in order to go grab a snack.

Also, the Import Music option for the program's library (crucial if you have a remote connection) doesn't actually allow you to access outside your network. Only your local drives are allowed. In order to access an outside resource, you have to manually find the folder through the "Import Song" setting. Even if you use Ctrl+A to highlight and import all the songs in the folder, it takes FOR-EV-ER to import them to the library. I'm talking 20 min to import only about a hundred songs.

As if that wasn't bad enough, you have to register your MP3 player with the online store before you can even use anything. That's really annoying if you just want to load a couple of songs on the thing just to test out the player. GRARG.

This was all found in 10 min of using the dumb program.

In conclusion, I resented the fact that you had to download an entirely new program to load your music in the first place, let alone get an amateurish program out of the bargain. I am not impressed.

I still like the player though.