No Rock And Roll Fun

SONY LAUNCH SERIOUS iPOD RIVAL: The points where it wins: It's a bit larger, it's a bit cheaper. The point where it loses: it still can't play mp3s. Or, indeed, wma files. Now, since, if you're paying four hundred bucks for a music player, paying a few more won't matter much, and since very, very few people are going to need the space for 10,000 songs anyway, so 13,000 is better in a not-really-valuable sense, the whole Walkman Digital proposition is going to come down to what feels sexier. The looks of the Walkman don't really compete with the iPod, and we wonder if keeping the Walkman name is such a smart move: it just cries out "tapes", possibly "tapes being chewed up."