ssjakira1's Full Review: Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-NE410 Personal MiniDisc Pla...
While I was still listening to my walkman and fighting skippage while jogging, my dad finally decided it was time to get himself an MP3 player. He came up with this, the Sony Net MD Walkman. MD stands for MiniDisc. Ok, close, but no cigar. All right, technically it plays MP3s, but it’s not the typical player we think of these days. The funny thing is that dad didn't realize it was a MiniDisc player until later. He was just thinking along the lines of iPods and such.
What You’ll Get
First there’s the player itself. Appearance-wise it’s a small black square around 2 inches in length by two inches in height and maybe half an inch wide. It’s surprisingly heavy. Nothing major, just something you wouldn’t expect out of it. There’s a small bulge in the back for the spot the single AA battery fits into. On the front there are shiny silver controls and a tiny little display area. I mean like, index finger print tiny. It can be somewhat hard to see at times and there isn’t any backlight, but it does scroll the song artist and name along and then show the track time ticking up. It also shows battery life and the number the song is in your little list. You will also find the typical headphone jack, a plug in for your USB cable, and a Hold switch.
As opposed to just storing the songs, they are written to a mini disc. Precisely the reason why you will only be able to fit 20-30 songs on here (all depending upon how big they are, of course) as opposed to over 200 on my iRiver. When completely empty, the player has roughly 156MB of space. Sure, that’s a lot of space, but when you’re dealing with songs that are 3, 4, or 5 (if not occasionally more) MB in size you get limited in song amount. Especially when getting music from CDs as they tend to get ripped (copying the songs from the CD to your computer hard drive) in high quality, which ultimately means they’ll be larger.
The Net MD comes with its own personal software that you will have to install via CD. It’s pretty easy to do and the instructions walk you through it. You’ll get the Net MD Simple Burner and the SonicStage Music Management Software. I think they add in a few other programs on the CD, but just know that it’s more than likely that you don’t need them. Trust me, most people already have enough media players on their computer. I can’t even say for sure that you need the burner for a part of SonicStage to work – it’s quite possible that you don’t.
You’ll also get a pair of headphones that are sub-par. They’re the typical kind that settle over your ears and have a thin layer of foam. I guess Sony didn’t feel like springing for earbuds at this juncture in time. There’s also the USB cable so you can actually transfer your music back and forth and make changes, etc. It’s a fairly short cord. A few feet is all, which is fine since I don’t foresee someone adding music from across the room or something weird like that.
How It All Works
When it comes to the player itself, it’s pretty easy to navigate. Volume buttons are separate, but the Play/Pause (doubling as the Enter button), Stop (which doubles as the Cancel and Off button), Forward, and Back buttons are all situated on a larger circular button. This has potential to be annoying if you want to go forward or back and your finger presses just near enough up or down, in which case you’d pause or stop your player and have to get it going again. I think I may have done this a few times while jogging. I do prefer my buttons to be separate. You can use the Hold switch in the case that you don’t accidentally hit a button and turn the player on, off, or goof up the volume.
There are two buttons, the Menu button and the Group button. I admit I don’t have a clue what several of them are supposed to do. Read your manual. I’ll let you know which ones I’m ignorant about.
Choosing Menu gives you:
Disp (Display): LapTime (no clue), T:Name (name and artist of song), D:Name (album name)
P-Mode (Player Mode): Normal (play all tracks as they are), 1 Trk (play one track), Shuff (shuffle the tracks)
Sound: Off (uh, no sound?), Sound1, Sound2, Set (which yields the options of Sound1 and Sound2 again). Don’t know what those are supposed to mean.
Option: AVLS (gives options of On and Off), Power (Normal, Quick). I don’t know what any of these mean either.
As for the Group button, I think it gives you the option of choosing certain songs you want to hear and in what order, but I’ve never toyed with it so I can’t be sure.
The Simple Burner program is pretty basic – take a music CD, pop it into the computer drive and copy the music over to the Net MD player. Simple as pie. You can’t run this program and SonicStage at the same time; the player can only work with one program at a time.
So, the SonicStage. Yeah. SonicStage is one of those programs where you either need instructions or you just go poking around until you understand it yourself. The major thing I like about this program is that it takes care of everything for you once you set it up; music CDs especially. You see, for my iRiver, I have to rip the music myself and then organize it and put it on my player. You can take care of all that with the Simple Burner. But usually you’re going to want more than just one CD involved – for me, a CD and music I already have on my computer. With SonicStage all I have to do is pop in the CD, organize the music a little, including the stuff already on my hard drive, in the Recording area of the program, and then hit the “Check-Out” button. Ta-da! It takes care of everything, ripping, transferring, all in one fell swoop. Not much multitasking involved. It may sound lazy, but it’s sort of tedious the other way. Especially if you want to switch up some songs right before you run. Where I have to sit and do one step at a time, I just scramble up some stuff in the program and say go.
Still, it is a little daunting at first. They can’t just say “Transfer.” Instead it’s “Check-In” (from player to computer) and “Check-Out” (computer to player). The program is made to look all slick and nifty, and though it does, navigation can be a little frustrating at times. You’d think the Import button (telling the program what music you want from your computer in the first place) would be first and foremost. Instead it’s hanging out in the far upper-right corner next to the Help button. I’m sure I must have found this the first time around, but years later (which occurred just a few months ago) I was using this since my dad got a new player and for the life of me, could not find it. I remember getting very annoying and trying to remember just how I did all this the first time. And for some reason at the very bottom they add in Equalizer options, Effect (still do not know that button’s purpose), Visualizer options in the case that you feel like playing music using the program, which you can do, via CD, computer drive, or the player itself, and an Internet button. They’re all pretty pointless. I don’t get why thy just can’t make this stuff nice and simple. I just want to move music from spot A to spot B – I don’t need all the bell and whistle crap.
All right. So let’s say you’ve got all your music on there and hit the treadmill. No problems there. It won’t skip and does what it’s supposed to. Play music with no fuss. You just have to get past all the program junk first. I can’t say what the battery life is, but I don’t remember the last time someone popped a new battery in here. It’s a decent player and I think dad got it for a decent amount of money (around $70 if I remember right). So if you aren’t into listening to trillions of songs and just need something to sustain you for a little while, this might be the right player for you. You’re going to have to make your own decision though, depending upon what you want in an MP3 player. It’s not perfect, but it ain’t bad either.
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