This is Not Your Dad's Walkman®

Posted by: Andrew Harris

Maybe, it's just my ornery old self, heading into middle-age, but the moniker "Walkman®” congers up images like Crazy Eddies’ electronics stores and the beginning of the fitness craze. These days Sony Walkman® has gone through some ups and downs, from the debunked Minidisc, to the unleashing of the market swarming iPod. It goes undisputed that Digital music is it. Steve and company would like you to believe that theirs is the best, if not only, option for you and your digital media savvy on-the-go lifestyle. Not true. Sony has come out the box with their Sony Walkman® NWZ-S610/A810 Digital Media players, basically Sony’s answer to the iPod Nano’s new video capabilities. The Sony Walkman® NWZ-S610 is equipped with a 1.8 LCD and the NWZ-A810 flaunts 2.0in LCD, both display in 320x240 resolutions at 30fps with clarity and brightness. Plus no more proprietary audio format Sony's "Connect" service is dead (thank you). Instead the player supports WMA, AAC, and MP3 on the audio end and JPEG, AVC, MPEG-4 on the display end. Need to convert formats? Sony's offering a free-ware converter to users. As far as uploading the thing you can use "most" subscription services and it is DRM compliant. Non-DRM content is uploaded via Windows Media Player; the unit comes with the latest version. The Sony Walkman® NWZ-A810 series player has an integrated FM tuner, 8hr video battery time, while the Sony Walkman® NWZ-S610 series players give you a 1.5hr more play time due to the smaller display. They both have a staggering music play back battery life of 33hr and are available in 8, 4, & 2 Gigs. The size of the Sony player is bit larger than the nano...it makes up for it in it's ability to transfer content both ways (without a hack), this far outweighs a small size difference. Plus "It's a Sony".

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