Posted by axxxr
Sony is about to begin shipping its latest indestructible tank,the NW-S23 S2 Sports Network Walkman. The two-ounce, four inch long player is water and shock resistant, and since it’s entirely solid state it’s also skip-proof, which is a really nice bonus for joggers. There is also an included armband so it doesn’t accidentally fall out of your pocket while running either.
While there is no recharging capability, the NW-S23 will still last for up to seventy hours on a single AAA battery. The 256MB of storage provided can hold about 170 songs encoded at 48kbps using Sony’s proprietary ATRAC3 format, and is compatible with songs downloaded from Sony’s online music service.
Posted by axxxr
Via: pcmag
Poor Sony. With its S2 Sports NW-S23 Network Walkman, it finally offers a digital audio player that plays MP3 files, and it's being roundly ignored by customers. It's small, light, boldly styled … and unloved. For all of the things that Sony gets so right in consumer electronics, it can't seem to come up with a digital audio player that people actually want to buy. Like the engineers and marketers who lost the Beta-versus-VHS battle, ("But it's better!"), Sony probably can't figure out why the music-consuming public rejects the high compression and good sound of ATRAC3.
We can't remember the last time we found it necessary to comment at length about the software that comes with a music player, but Sony's utility managed to annoy us at every turn. First, it was a long, tedious install, which we couldn't complete with ZoneAlarm active. Hello? That's only the world's most popular firewall. The installation required a reboot, which most other music-player-software installations have learned to avoid. Functions are distributed over several pieces of software, and they can't run at the same time. And if all you want to do is transfer your MP3 files to the player, the installation is mostly a waste of time. All you really need is the driver, so the S2 Sports appears as a disk drive to your system, and a utility program called MP3 File Manager, which you run from the player's memory.
MP3 File Manager didn't run correctly on our test system, though, and a fresh download and reinstall from Sony's Web site didn't cure the problem. Without it, we couldn't move MP3 tracks to the player, and we were resolutely opposed to converting our music library to ATRAC3 for the sake of testing one funky little 256MB player. We did, however, listen to songs that were preloaded onto the player. Besides, MP3 File Manager doesn't really move MP3 files. It converts them to an intermediate format that can't be transferred to another computer, another example of Sony's corporate paranoia about copyright protection, even of low-resolution, compressed music files.
As for the S2 Sports itself, it's an unusual shape, which you might assume to embody some ergonomic insights that somehow escaped other designers. That's not the case. The controls are laid out on various edges and surfaces, and they encompass an astonishing six different styles or shapes. The two-line screen is small, low-contrast, and weakly backlit. One nice touch is the weather-resistant seal on the bottom of the player, which covers the USB port and battery. The armband is comfortable and anchors solidly to the player, and the earbuds, with individual behind-the-ear pieces, remain secure in strenuous workouts and sound good.
With unfriendly software, an unremitting emphasis on ATRAC3, a limited feature set, questionable ergonomics, and a price that's not cheap compared with players that offer more, we can't find much to recommend in the Sony S2 Sports NW-S23.