Finally got us an mp3 player. It's cute as a button too.
When we saw it, only half looking for one, the price seemed really good. It was only when we got it home that I realized Sony, being a typically territorial technology company, required that songs be converted to their ATAC4 format before being loaded on the device. Well after about two hours of fucking with software installs, downloads and updates, it became clear that this was an absurd system. Out of around a dozen tracks converted and loaded, only two came out with anything that could remotely be considered good sound quality.
So, just minutes away from tossing the thing into a river, I found a review of the device online that said one could, with yet another software download, load mp3's directly on to the thing. Wow, I thought, just like a real mp3 player, how novel. So I tried one last download and found to my surprise, that it worked like a charm, and I am thrilled with the little guy.
On a slight tangent, I discovered a free cd ripper that works beautifully to turn all of my legally purchased cd's into mp3's.
Who says you can't take it with you?