Sony MZ-NF520D Net MD Walkman (White)
by Sony
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List Price: Our Price: $90.00 You Save: $89.99 (50%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Sony MZ-NF520D Net MD Walkman (White)
Customer Review: Nice, but Limited
Summary: 3 Stars
Bottom Line:
This is a great unit for the price, but for people with an expansive library of music or for those who use multiple computers, I would not recommend it.
I've had this player for almost two years and would describe it as durable with great music playback, but that darn ATRAC format puts a real damper on things. It always converts my mp3s to this format which is a waste time (Granted it's only a few minutes, but I like to get things done as quick as possible). And though I haven't checked for recent updates of the software(SonicStage), the version I have is not very user-friendly and took me a while to get used to.
But my biggest gripe is that in Sony's attempt to reduce music piracy, they've put protection on this thing that prevents you from uploading music on computers other than the one your unit is registered on. Granted, this is not a big deal for most consumers, but I travel a lot and find it very frustrating when I can't remix my music while at a different computer.
Lastly, the capacity is limited (Room for about 35 songs in standard quality) and no one likes carrying around extra minidiscs, regardless of how small they are.
Bottom, bottom line:
This is a great little machine...Though I wouldn't recommend it for those of us in 2005. Go for the ipod, I know everyone has it and you'll be part of the "trendy" crowd, but it's popular for a reason- it's superior to everything else out there (I have a nano and feel just like those dancing silhouette people in the commercials).
Customer Review: Great for about six months
Summary: 2 Stars
This item worked fine for about six months. Then, the remote started to work very strangely. The play button would change tracks. The stop button would sometimes change the volume and sometimes turn the bass on and off. The bass button did nothing. The rewind and fast-forward buttons selected random tracks, rather than going back one track or forward one track. To me, the remote is a very important part of this walkman, especially on the go. I don't want to dig into the belt where my player is and fool around with it every time I need to. And now, the remote doesn't work at all. The same problem happened with the previous player I had, which is the same product. But that one had a longer life span.
Other than the remote, the player works fine. The sound is good, but I don't know about the radio, since I don't listen to the radio. But overall, if you rely on the remote, look for a different player.
Customer Review: Not an MP3 player
Summary: 2 Stars
This player DOES NOT PLAY MP3s/WMAs/etc. Do not be fooled by the labeling. It converts these formats into ATRAC, this becomes a problem when you try to transfer over protected file formats that you might download off of iTunes and such. It's better to say this is an ATRAC player.Customer Review: This MD Parade Needs Some Rain
Summary: 1 Stars
NOTE: THIS IS NOT SO MUCH A REVIEW AS IT IS A WARNING!
Five years ago, I discovered the MiniDisc format. I think that preciously naive time happened before the mp3 format came stomping into the music world and slew tapes, CDs and MiniDiscs with its mighty clawed feet, and then did a dance on their corpses. At that time five years ago I had no computer, so I was thrilled by MDs. The MD was the perfect replacement for the analog cassette; it was versatile, could be erased and reused, and just looked damn cool.
But Amercia missed the MiniDisc greyhound bus to Acceptance, and the poor unsupported format withered and almost died. But, possibly due to the stubbornness of Sony Corporation, MiniDisc was kept alive for Reasons Unknown, even though it was eclipsed by CD-Rs, mp3 players, and even possibly those little individual song player tapes manufactured by Tiger Electronics for pre-teens.
Though I can't say when, exactly, someone in Sony said, "let's try to re-vitalize the MiniDisc by making them able to talk to personal computers!" Perhaps he'd been on an all-day sake binge. It would make sense, because the idea was at least five years past its prime and smelled like rice-wine. So, the magnificent idea to bring MD into the 21st century spread and took hold in Sony, and has trickled down to us, the Playstation and Walkman-buying American public. NetMD was born.
By the time I stopped using MiniDisc format, I had amassed over 50 of the colorful little buggers, full of songs for CDs that I had since parted ways with, and tapes which I wanted to preserve. At least a fourth of my collection was made of songs that I had written and produced myself, from live shows to sound room practices. And here, dear readers, is the reason this product, or any other NetMD product deserves 1 star:
IF YOU OWN MINIDISCS WITH TRACKS RECORDED ON MEDIUMS OTHER THAN A PC, SUCH AS MD PLAYER TO MD PLAYER OR CD TO MD OR ANALOG TO MD, THE SONY SOFTWARE RECOGNIZES IT BUT WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO TRANSFER THE FILES TO THE COMPUTER. EVEN SONGS YOU WROTE AND LEGALLY OWN YOURSELF ARE NOT CONSIDERED 'TRANSFERABLE' BY NETMD UNLESS THEY WERE FIRST RECORDED USING A PC. YOUR OWN VOICE IS NOT TRANSFERABLE.
I was so mad that the NetMD I purchased for the sole purpse of transferring the music on my MDs to my computer was unable to transfer a single song, I returned it the next day to Best Buy and got my money back.
So, my advice in terms of MiniDisc and especially NetMD - it's over. The ship has sailed. Remember them fondly, or use them as coasters, but don't get into MiniDisc. It's a dead format and a product whose prime was in the previous decade.
Customer Review: sonic stage is worthless
Summary: 1 Stars
ok guys lets make this simple DO NOT BUY ANY MINIDISC PLAYER the problem is this product promises to be able to transfer your music files to the minidisc and it cant it constantly hangs my machine (dell 8400 2GB ram ,3GHZ) i have reintalled my operating system XP then Vista in an attempt to get it to work it still doesnt so my brand new minidisc player is going into the bin.......sony is playing the fool they had a wonderfull product and hindered it with worthless software....if u want portable music buy an ipod instead you wont regret it.