Nostalgic technologies article

[Philip Pemberton]

David Griffith wrote:
>> Sony Minidiscs
> 
> Sony botched this one badly.  It could have replaced the floppy disk 
> years before Iomega tried to do so with the Zip.

Aye, too true.

I am, however, still keeping my MZ-RH1 (that'll be MZ-M200 to anyone on the 
other side of the pond) on the grounds that it's the best tool I've found to 
record lectures *and* listen to music on the train. I've never met anyone who 
could talk for long enough to fill an entire HiMD disc on Hi-LP mode (IIRC 
that's about 35 hours).

Crippling NetMD (the PC <==> MD transfer system) to only allow transfers from 
PC to MD (and prevent you deleting those tracks even if they weren't covered 
by SonicStage's DRM -- you can get around this with a CD emulator and a copy 
of Simple Burner) was a terrifically bad idea. Though that said, at least they 
left the optical output relatively unmolested.

The RH1 seems to have been built as a "last ditch" by Sony. Something along 
the lines of "this may well be the last MD recorder we ever design, so let's 
make it *really* *friggin'* *good*". The lack of any significant volume 
limiting on the headphone output of European RH1s (unlike previous MD units) 
and the HD-Digital amplifier were the icing on the cake.

They have carved themselves something of a niche though -- nearly every 
journalist I know or have met either owns or has access to a Minidisc 
recorder. I've heard they're popular with musicians as well (sound quality vs. 
cost, I guess).

You can have my Minidisc recorder when you pry it from my cold dead hands!

-- 
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/