The thing is, it started out harmlessly enough, an ad in the paper advertising that a certain company had shaved $100 off from 399 to 299. From there I thought maybe just go down take a look see, look see. It was an accident really that I went back $299 poorer. I didn't even notice I bought it until I found myself having to put the box down to open the door.
But boy was it a beauty.
\Shiny like a square-shaped 6 Gb mercury drop, you are never quite sure what to make of it. Quite simply it looks alien-ishly cool. When you first start it up it even greets you in perfect english.
"Every moment has it's music", read mine on the first try. Depending on the mood of the player, you sometimes also get "good day , good music" which I presume would translate to a positive emotion for the player.
Like the Ipod, the interface was fool-proof. Unless, of course, you happily changed the language to tamil or spanish during which I pray you are a patient person.
Both the options and back buttons are a little recessed into the body and are a little hard to get to, but with practice , stubby fingers or not, the buttons get pushed giving a small satisfying click.
On the underside is the reset button and the charging port.
I totally don't understand why different companies must use different kind of cables to connect their devices to our PCs. For me, I am pro ...er...Normal USB to mini USB. This one cable can be used for transfering data from my digital camera and my Creative MP3 player to my computer. If one is spoilt I have another one ready.
That said however, the cable for the Sony NW-A1000 does the job well enough.
On one side is the volume control button which I like playing with because it slides so smoothly it feels like I am er...sliding the volume control.
Topside lies both the hold button and the earphone jack.
Perhaps the most interesting button on the entire device is the one that glows orange when depressed.
Pushing this buttons sets in motion a series of actions. The song you are listening to continues playing and the player calls up artistes with songs of the same genre and from there let you form a sort of shuffle with songs of the same genre.
But of course the player is not all perfect.
The shiny front is a fingerprint magnet though unlike the Ipod it is rather hard to scratch. The program that comes with the player wouldn't open and only when a patch was installed did it open. This time it was microsoft's fault but Sony did receive quite an e-mail from me.
Songs stored on the device are not readable unless your computer happens to have Sonicstage or Connect software installed. This makes it inconvenient for users who want to listen to their music on their friend's computer. The player acts as a hard-disk when files are dragged and dropped into the player though .
One other gripe I have is that it only displays Chinese characters only when the language is set to Chinese. *groans*
Apart from that, the player is a bargain that sounds great and looks good.
Plus I especially like the " see you later " message flash on the screen everytime I switch it off. It makes me want to go switch it on again.
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