This seems to be the audio equivalent of a supermarket trolley - it has a unique ability to do whatever it wants despite the user! The worst problem is the unpredictable behaviour of the remote controller and the ease with which you can end up, for example, listening to tracks in a silly order.

It's actually very good as a portable recording device and an MP3 player with a substantial capacity, without the bulk of a jukebox, and with good battery life. Recording four hours of classical music gives adequate quality for portable listening. It isn't really loud enough using the provided headphones, unfortunately, to drown out train noise or other people's walkmen. Transfer via USB is somewhat slow and a firewire connection would have been useful. The supplied software is dreadful, and comes with ludicrous copyright protection devices which really inhibit sensible use, but this can be circumvented by downloading something like Real Player and installing the Sony minidic module.