Just got a
Sony NW-A3000 20 gig mp3 player yesterday, and the player itself is very nice. It looks good, feels good, and has 35 hours of playback time. I chose it over the new ipod because I wasn't really interested in the photo/video aspects, and the Sony has almost double the battery life. It's also around £50 cheaper if you shop around (
http://www.amazon.co.uk :))
What does dissapoint however, is the supplied "Connect" software. It doesn't work. I've updated it, and still nothing. If I try and import more than two or three albums at once it will totally freeze up. Even importing one album to the library takes long enough - I'm talking several minutes. I have about 13 gigs of mp3s.. there is no way in hell I'm sitting here adding each album individually. The point is, I shouldn't need to.
The amount of power the program takes up is scary. I have a 2400+ XP and 1024mb of ram, WAY above the minimum needed. I ctrl+alt+deleted to processes to see just how much it was eating up :
I kid you not - 150 mb memory usage. Something is blatantly wrong here. I've forgotten the CPU usage numbers, but they were stupidly high too.
I made the big mistake of thinking I'll just add the whole lot at once and leave it overnight... Well, it froze, and now when I try to open the programme it takes several minutes, and ends up screwing up anyway.
Totally unsatisfactory. And, judging by the reviews I've read after doing a bit of research into the issues I've been having, I'm not the only person. Here's just one
thread about it. FYI I have installed all updates, and am still having issues.. I have uninstalled and reinstalled... no luck.
There is a way to get tracks onto it.. If you use the older software (Sonic Stage 3.3) it works fine for sticking on songs.
However, the old software doesn't support a few of the features on the player, such as the artist link button (which finds other artists/songs of the same genre on your player). Some playlist functions don't work if you use Sonic Stage either - top 100, intelligent shuffle or play history.
These are all features I can live without.. but again - I shouldn't have to.
I've read on one forum that a new Connect player update is due either today or tomorrow, but really I'm contemplating just sending the thing back because of the amount of hassle it's caused: I spent most of yesterday fighting with the damn thing. The most annoying part of that is that it was a belated 18th present from my uncle, and I feel ungrateful/whiney wanting to send it back now I've got it half working... but at the end of the day it's not fully functional so therefore in my eyes it warrants being returned. If it was my £175 I know I'd return it. He had ordered me the new iPod (I didn't know anything about this) but it was delayed, and my dad told him I was more interested in the Sony anyway, so he rang me up and asked if I'd want the order changed. Of course I was extremely grateful of the gift, it's a
very expensive piece of kit. He never usually remembers my birthday let alone even send a card either so it's a special gesture to me in that respect too. But I'm extremely bummed as I've never returned a present in my life.
My advice? Stay away, unless these software issues get solved 100%.
I suppose something good happened yesterday though... I pulled!
My leg!! :lol: So I can't really walk very well atm either... :oops:
