Ha Ha! Open Source WINS!

Well, after I complained again about Sony/Sonicstage, I decided to search some more and see if there was an alternative.

And viola, wikipedia's entry on sonicstage contains a link to an alternate sourceforge free project which does exactly what their 30 megabyte junk application does in a mere 246 kilobytes... a size difference of roughly 40 times. Oh yeah- and the app is a platform-independent .jar file which lives ON THE PLAYER- so you can plug it in and go, wherever you are.

But wait, there's more!

Sony/SonicStage has built in security, so you can't do things like copy music onto the player on one pc and copy it off the player on another- never mind whether you own both of them or not.

"NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager", as it is called on sourceforge, lets you do whatever you want with the $100 player you purchased.

S/Ss makes you manage your CD info through their partner site, a site you have to sign up for to use.

S/Ss 'gives' you 5 free downloads with your player, but in order to get them you have to sign up for an account and supply them with your billing information.

S/Ss makes you register your device with them online if you would like to have the honor of connecting to more than one computer and accessing files.

S/Ss, for the honor of giving them your money, has you sign a contract in your own blood and you also 'owe them one' in that mafioso kind of way. Ok, I made that part up.

The "NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager" just works. Here's the link to wikipedia (scroll to the bottom) and also to the sourceforge page.

I knew the little guy would win in the end.