Opinion on the Sony MZ-N505 MD Recorder

Hi,

I usually use my Panasonic play only MD when I am travelling, and always used to create new disks with a Sony home MD deck. The problem is I have recently moved from the UK to the US, and as a result I got rid of most of my home electronics with the intention of getting new stuff when I got here, MD recorder included.

Well after 5 months of being here I find I am getting bored of the disks I have, and with travel at Christmas looming, I want to create some new disks, so I started looking at the available recorders, and found some of the new Sony recorders come with something called NetMD, which, from what I can tell allows you to rip on a PC and then download to a standard ATRAC format disc over USB, it also mentions the PC SW can handle MP3.

So the questions I have are
- If I want to 'convert' some of my existing MP3s how long does it take, is it just a quick conversion or is it more 'real-time'.
- What is the PC SW like, I have heard some people saying lately that the PC SW for X or Y is a nightmare, It probably won't put me off buying one, but it may be nice to know.
- How long does download take for an SP disk, USB 1.1 is about 1Mbyte second throughput, MD is around 140MB capacity so my calculations make it just over 2 minutes, is it actually close to that?

Also I guess I may come up with some more questions,

Thanks,
Mark.
20GB MKII 090000916

Interesting. I still have one of the original Sony MD recorders, but I have to admit, I haven't used it in a few years. Especially now that the empeg has been around, I find it hard to carry any media around, no matter how good it is

But I do like them better than CDs.

Sony does a good job with their mD products (well, I suppose they should, after all).