Sony's rival to ipod...

Sony plans Walkman to rival iPod. OK, it looks OK, is light and has great battery life, but I still say pah!

Here are some reasons why you should still buy an ipod:

1. It ONLY supports ATRAC, unlike the ipod which supports wav, aif, MP3s as well as Apple's own AAC format. You would have to convert your entire MP3 collection. Furthermore, in a recent listening test, ATRAC came last.

2. It is only going to be PC compatible, unlike ipod and itunes which is cross-platform.

3. Sony say that it will hold 13,000 songs as opposed to ipod's 5,000. Read closely though chums: Apple base their figures on 128 kbps files, while sony base theirs on "songs recorded at 48 kilobits per second" - which I promise will sound rubbish.

4. It costs the same as an ipod. So why on earth not buy an ipod? It is a design and functional masterpiece.

And finally on the subject: sony are making a system which works with computer audio files, like their net MD and memory stick walkmen. All well and good. But hold on - many sony music CDs won't play on a PC, so you probably can't listen to them on your sony walkman anyway. Doh!

At least sony are not as desperate as dell...