Why buy this when you can buy a DS?

I agree. From a gamers standpoint $100 is a joke. From a trendy highschool/college perspective if it takes off, I have to have it.

I actually had someone call my 60GB iPod a device too big to carry around. The thing is the size of a deck of cards or pack of smokes and its too big to carry around? The more I think about it the Micro might be a better seller than I realize. It will definitely be a hit in Japan (which is priority one for Nintendo) but I may be wrong and it may do well in the US as well.

People paying $100 for a system on its last legs makes no sense though.

Well a flash player is better for workouts than a HD based player so that's one reason to pick up a shuffle over the 4gig player.

The Shuffle is a joke of a flash player, it only plays songs randomly right?

No, you can have it play songs in order, or shuffle.

But it has no screen to display song names, no FM tuner, no recording functions etc. So, yes, I agree that it's a joke of a flash player.

Those micro shots are damn impressive. The price is outrageous, but I bet it will sell reasonably well. People play games on their cell phones all the time. And this plays good games, not rinky dink Java games. Well worth toting around.

I thought the screen was supposed to be right from the DS? It looks smaller than a DS screen to me. Is that just the picture or is it smaller?

They need to make the new GB in several colors for the female market. I know tons of girls that are not gamers, but play their cell phone games non-stop. Carrying around that little thing would be a breeze too.

I love my Ipod shuffle. First, the regular Ipod is significantly larger in comparison. Call it small, call it a deck of cards (I think not), but one way or the other, it's larger than the shuffle.

I picked up the 1gb for $129. It's easy enough to put songs on and take them off though 1gb lets me put a larger collection of my library on there. Don't care about the song name - I know that when I hear it. Don't care about FM (Ummm, I want the Ipod for quality, which FM is not). It would be nice to be able to scroll through a list of songs on a display, but I primarily use the shuffle feature anyway - just for randomly played songs.

Can you at least remove the flash memory card?

No, like the bulk of flash players, you can't remove or replace the flash memory.

Fair enough. I have around 3,500 songs on my computer and I use a program to randomly fill my flash player for working out so it's pretty often for a song to pop up that I don't recognize and it's nice to be able to look at the screen on my Creative Muvo and see what it is.


I need the FM for sports.

This has been my gripe for awhile. Nintendo as a company keeps blathering on about how they expect to expand their business by bringing in non gamers especially women. In Japan they make efforts toward this and they release DS and and Micro units with colors specifically aimed for women. In this country they talk about, but they do absolutely nothing. My wife ended up getting a silver DS, but she wanted one of the candy pink ones they sell in Japan.

Nintendo won't come out and admit it, but they act like they have completely given up on the US market.

That's why you buy a Sony


Sony NW-E507 Network Walkman 1 GB Digital Music Player with FM Tuner

I don't see how you draw that conclusion from their lack of a pink console... though I think they've always been a Japanese-centric company.

They did have that pink GBA... I wonder how that sold. Since then, nothing. If the pink one isn't announced for here (and apparently you can vote for it at their website) soon, I'll import one for my wife in time for AC DS.

Nope, I love my creative Muvo Micro. Great sound quality, tiny and stylish. FM tuner and FM/Voice/Line in recording functions.

The sony is slick looking though. But they sony players were out of my price range (and I don't think any that cool were out when I was looking 6 months or so ago, unless I just missed them).

I'm all about the cubeness:

As a long time user of Sony Minidisc Players I can tell you the one major weakness of any Sony Digital Music player and its Sonic Stage. Sony definitely has some great looking players, but they make them tedious to use because of their security concerns as a music publisher.

The new Sony flash players will let you drag and drop to avoid using Sonic Stage, but even that is kind of a headache as you have to run a program on the actual player and then use that to copy files onto the flash player. Its not real drag and drop because Sony is so worried about security. Its also a one way transer unlike the Creative. Its also MP3 or Atrac3 only. No Audible.com, WMA or any other type of file you might want.

If you can put up with Sonic Stage using Atrac3 plus is a good option as it plays back music gapless, but the Sony players don't have the ease of use that the Creative players and I found the sound quality of MP3 playback to be worse than either Creative or Apple. Sony uses very weak amps to get higher battery life (which is why their 20GB jukebox gets 40 hours), but the downside is weak audio output. You can hear much more detail in the same tracks played on a Creative player compared to a Sony player.

I used Sony Digital Music players for close to a decade and while they have improved greatly they still have a long way to go to catch up to Creative and Apple. They definitely have the look especially with the OLED screens, but they need to focus on less restrictions, better amps and better software to manage your player. At least give the freedom to use any app you want with your player the way Creative does.

not sure how this turned into a mp3 player discussion but i luv my muvo cept the small problem that it eats batteries even when its not on

I think it's true that not too many here care about the Micro.

SpacemanSpiff, are you the same one from TSM and Gaming Age (among other forums)?

Yes he is.

Very cool, thanks.

I might think about getting the micro if it gets down to the $40-$50 price range. My GBA and PSP are currently enough for me.

The shuffle is pretty cool, its ~1/4 the weight of the ipod mini. 1 gig is more than enough space for what I use it for. The size is fine to, its not really any bigger than a usb memory stick. Use of arm strap makes it perfect for the gym (any HD based player is going to be too bulky). You get about 15 hours out of it which is 10 hours more than my old no-name brand flash player.

The worst thing by far IMO is the lack of track lists. Even if you only had 2-3 track lists, available by a physical switch perhaps, that would still be more than enough for my purpose. Only having one set of tracks that you can access randomly is too restrictive.