New Toy Squee

Got a new toy, for my England trip (I figure it will be nice to have music on my long train rides). The Sony Network Walkman E507 is a lovely MP3/ATRAC player which came out just after I was a QA tester for the 505. I'm something of an audiophile and major league critic, so it was a big surprise to me how superb the505 sounded, even with 64kbps compression. The 507 adds to this a 50-hour battery (charged via USB cable), 1Gb memory, FM tuner, a spiffy silver metal case, and a most beautiful display. You have to see it, I can't describe it except it looks like a plasma display which magically appears just under the silver metal surface. I ripped a couple of CDs to the ATRAC format (this took about 15 minutes per CD) and transferred them to the 507 - in about 2 minutes each CD.

The headphones which came with this (refurbished) unit are wonderful too. Bigger than earbuds, but small enough to fit in a pocket, very well padded, and they sound great. Less than $100. Better, IMHO, than the comparable 1Gb iPod.