New Walkman

When I was about 15 my brother Warren and I headed to the Eaton's downtown to buy me my own Sonly Walkman. I belive it was a WM-9 and cost about $75. I had it through most of highschool or at least until it's size became an embarassement. It only played tapes so it didn't have an AM/FM tuner nor did it have auto-reverse. It used 4AA batteries and had a strap to lug it around like a 'tricorder'. I kept a collection of Maxell and Teac tapes full of 80's music. It was a great little machine.

22 years later I bought myself another Sony Walkman, only this time it doesn't play tapes. What are tapes again? I wonder if all those little Indian owned stores on Yonge street are still selling cases of tapes, but I digress. It's about the size of two AA batteries and weighs next to nothing. I could have made it easy on myself and bought an iPod but I went old shool. Main considerations were FM tuner, durability and fidelity. The Sony NW-S205F is a sports Walkman so it's weather-proof and comes with the arm band etc. Cool extras are that it comes with a pedometer, calorie counter, and stopwatch. It also detects the workout rate so it can change the playlist accordingly. For example change from Air Supply to Kenny Loggins-Top Gun when you're heading downhill at 80mph.

Coupe of issues, it does not allow you to drag and drop Mp3 files to it like most players that's because Sony natively suports ATRAC and not Mp3 so you need to use it's SonicStage software transfer mp3 files. The screen is only 1 line so it's not as pretty or intuitive to use as the iPod. ATRAC tracks however have a much higher sound quality and requires less storage, as a positive side effect the unit can play for 3 hours with only a 3 minute charge.

So 25 years later Sony is no longer the leader in portable music players. The Mini Disc was a commecial flop and heads rolled this year at Sony due to loss of Mp3 player market share to Apple Inc. Still I bought another Walkman and it's still a great little machine.