I hate the coverage of Dell & Sony players!

edgar_is_good

Ack! If I have to read one more article about the Dell trade in or Sony walkman, I'm going to yak. Some highlights



From Reuters

"Dell's player works with online music stores that use the MP3 and Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT.O Windows Media Audio formats, while Apple's iPod only works with its own iTunes online music store"



Wha? The iPod can't play mp3's?



"The Japanese consumer electronics maker said the 20-gigabyte device, which is its second hard-disk drive gadget aimed at unseating Apple and can store 13,000 songs...it is expected to sell for around 53,000 yen ($487) in Japan and less than $400 in the United States, Sony said, undercutting Apple's 40-gigabyte device, which sells for $499 and can hold up to 10,000 songs."



This is journalism? They don't know it, but by making this comparison they're saying "48kbps ATRACs are just as good as 128kpbs AAC!" which is..., well, you know what it is.



I'm sorry, but I just have to vent. So many articles and only the most tech savvy of them seem to understand that "song" is not a quantifiable unit, not even "4 minute song", at least without comparing apples to apples (no pun intended).



I feel a bit better now.

hmurchison

There was once a time where I was naive and thought that the neophyte could gather helpful information from larger media sources. However looking at the amount of faulty information I really do feel for consumers who are caught up in these type of articles which don't explain the subjects in specificity. Dell tried to do the same trick with the song limit and it's very deceptive. But you know marketing teams will go up to that blurry line which on the other side is an outright lie.

the cool gut

Quote:

Originally posted by edgar_is_good



This is journalism? They don't know it, but by making this comparison they're saying "48kbps ATRACs are just as good as 128kpbs AAC!" which is..., well, you know what it is.

I feel a bit better now.

Well, it's even worse than that, because the Sony can't even play regular MP3's ... so it's chance of penetrating the U.S. market are ZERO. No, that's not an understatement. No doubet there is some "manipulation" going on behind the scenes.

neutrino23

The one that bugs me is the claim for 20 hours battery life. I am very skeptical that this is true given that it is smaller than an iPod. Smaller means smaller battery. My guess is that they get a 20 hour life by setting it to play one song over and over at low volume. This way the song would load into memory only one time. The hard drive would be shut down for most of the 20 hours. No information. Just speculation. It wouldn't be a bad idea for Sony to add some firmware to help this out. For example, if memory is large enough (or the song is short enough) they could decode the song once and keep the decoded version in memory. Not having to decode the song saves on CPU cycles which saves power. I guess that if you actually used it to randomly play songs manually the battery life would be shorter.

michael wilkie

Even worse are these recent claims that iPods are a security risk. I mean, they are a risk, I suppose, but no worse than any removable media. I don't hear these "analysts" calling to ban floppies.

hmurchison

Quote:

Originally posted by Michael Wilkie

Even worse are these recent claims that iPods are a security risk. I mean, they are a risk, I suppose, but no worse than any removable media. I don't hear these "analysts" calling to ban floppies.

Or notebooks for that matter