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CD was successful on replacing LP because of convenicence and usability. Beeing able to store all tracks on one side, random access, fast forward, repeat, shuffle - remote controlled - all on a tiny disc was the LP killer. The same with MP3 vs CD - it's not because of sound quality - it's easy of use. I'd prefere WinAmp any day against a CD player.

Without Sony's support the CD format would hold less than one hour, be a 14-bit format and the discs would have been bigger. Matshushita had no part in the design of the red-book format.

  http://www.licensing.philips.com/licensees/patent/ cd/

MemoryStick is still the second largest flash memory format. Both MS-PRO and MS-M2 was co-developed with SanDisc - and any MS tech can be licenced by anyone. It's just as proprietary as any other format and is fullt backwards compatible (but because of smaller physical size you might need an adaptor to fit the small "duo" and "mini" cards into a full-size MS-slot).

  http://www.memorystick.org/

DAT was fairly succesful with both pro and audiophiles, MD is still popular in Japan and is/was quite popular in EU (the MD system is nearly 15 years old and they still produce new models - I would call that a success).

Blu-Ray is just as cross-industry as DVD was and is not a "Sony" format. Sony owns much of the patents they intend to use, just as it did with the original DVD (and the loosing HD DVD format). There are just as many members of the BD forum as it was in the original DVD forum (consortium).

Actually the most proprietary Sony product ever might have been the 3.5" "floppy" disk system - it survived ZIP drives MiniDiscData and tons of others.

Why shouldn't Sony stick to MemoryStick? They have excellent form factor, are fast and the PRO variant scales to 32GB. It's not a locked Sony technology, in fact the PRO spec was co-op'ed with SanDisc. You can easily buy Lexar, SanDisc or Sony MS media.

http://www.memorystick.org/
http://www.memorystick.com/

> Without standards, there's no volume.

Actually MS is the second most popular format, and with 2 million PlayStationPortables rolling off the assembly line each month this summer - there will be 10's of million more MS users just this year ...

The last two years, both SD and MS has outsold CF. In 2004 SD had 31% of the market while MS had 22% in the US, the numbers are even more favourable in Japan.

oh look, Sony is the only brand of TV that offers a memory stick reader, so I can take the stick out of my camera, stick it in the TV and get a nice slide show. hooray.

Then ask your TV maker to license Memory Stick.

That's a great idea. Tell me more about these so-called "Memory Sticks" of which you speak.

USB memory stick-something like one of these

That's not a Memory Stick. It's a USB flash drive. Sony controls trademarks and patents related to Memory Stick technology.

See http://www.memorystick.org for more details. It appears to be a standard being promoted by Sony only right now. It's difficult to say how 'open' it really is.

Actually, memory stick devices are made by dozens of companies (companies like Kenwood, Pioneer, Mitsubishi, Sharp, Acer, Fujitsu, Samsung, HP, and Lexmark).

And I doubt the $4 is the licensing fee. According to memorystick.org, the licensing fees to develop a memory stick product are 500,000 Yen/year (about $4,000) with no running royalty.

No major manufacturer except for Sony endorses memory stick.

http://www.konica.co.jp/global/press/020924_8e.htm l
http://www.konica.com/products/digital/cameras/kd4 00z_features.htm
http://www.konica.com/products/digital/cameras/kd3 10z_features.htm
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/news/digital_med ia/com_news_1042258148609_001300.html
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/news/digital_med ia/com_news_1042258779765_001300.html
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/camcorder/digita l_camcorder/b_scd590.html
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/camcorder/digita l_camcorder/g_scd87.html
http://www.brother.com/usa/fax/info/mfc5200c/mfc52 00c_ove.html
http://h30015.www3.hp.com/products/detail.php?prod num=Q3000A
http://h30015.www3.hp.com/products/detail.php?prod num=C8443A
http://h30015.www3.hp.com/products/detail.php?prod num=Q1605A
http://www.lexmark.com/US/products/overview/0,1224 ,MzM1NHwx,00.html
http://www.i-love-epson.co.jp/products/printer/ink jet/pm860pt/pm860pt1.htm
http://www.i-love-epson.co.jp/products/printer/ink jet/pm850pt/pm850pt1.htm
http://www.kenwood.com/j/products/home_audio/digit al_avino/sj_7ms/index.html
http://www.pioneer.co.jp/catalog/sys/x-sv7dv.php
http://www.pioneer.co.jp/av-sys/hd1/index.html
http://www.sun-denshi.co.jp/scc/bb/index.htm
http://www.sharp.co.jp/sc/eihon/wahp1/text/index.h tml
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/Pioneer/CDA/CarP roducts/CarProductDetails/0,1429,21417,00.html
http://www.mitsubishielectric.co.jp/mobile/mova/d2 51is/index.html
http://www.sharp.co.jp/products/sh712m/
http://global.acer.com/products/pda/s60.htm
http://global.acer.com/products/pda/s50.htm
http://www.global.acer.com/products/pda/n20w.htm
http://www.global.acer.com/products/pda/s15.htm
http://www.clevo.com.tw/products/images/8880.pdf
http://pr.fujitsu.com/jp/news/2002/10/8-2.html
http://www.nec.co.jp/press/ja/0210/1004-30.html
http://121ware.com/product/pc/lavie/200205/pro/spe c01.pdf
http://www.alpine.co.jp/alpine/navi02/n02.html
http://www.datatec.co.jp/sr/index.html
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_prod uct_lobbypage.asp?product=847

Shall I go on?

And yes, the memory stick format is much more expensive

I just paid $30 for 128 MB MS. Show me a better price for CF or SD/MMC.

not to mention has various confusing variations (e.g. magic gate)

You mean 2? Magic gate, non-Magic gate? Boy, that is confusing.

and is still proprietary

"Proprietary", eh? Guess what? All of the major formats are proprietary. Want to sell a CF device? You can if you ante up to the CF org. Sony has released quite a few specifications (http://www.memorystick.org/topics/eng/aboutms/for mat.html).

You might find prices on Amazon.com come close to CF or SD/MMC but I can walk into any camera shop and be offered compact flash cards by 3 or 4 manufactures where I'd be lucky if could find 2 for memory stick.

I count 6 manufacturers of Memory Stick: Lexar, SanDisk, Sony, I-O Data, Apacer Tech.

• PalmOS5 will be out soon and that's the only truth this guy included in his post. However, this fact is pretty overrated. PDA's are not bought for their upgradability (or if they are, they are by stupid people); in fact, although most PDA's are upgradable today very few people actually upgrade them. The only PDA so far that has had a major upgrade released for it is the Compaq Ipaq, and there have been many problems with it. When you buy your PDA, buy it for what it can do out of the box, not what it can do in the future.
• ALL apps support Sony's 320x320 resolution. If there's some bad programming in the app you can reset the Clie to work as if it were 160x160 resolution. If you mean few apps are built especially for Sony's 320x320 resolution, you're wrong again. It took a few months, but most popular apps are made especially for Sony's hi-res, including even many games. Even though the NR-series has only been out in the US for days, there are already programs popping up for the 480x320 resolution (which can still run any program ever fine).
• It has approximately the same battery life as PPC devices. If you're waiting for PalmOS5 devices, you'll see around the same battery life, if not less.
• The Memory Stick is the smallest flash media device available except for the extremely expensive Secure Digital format. Memory Sticks used to be expensive, but they're now about the same as Compact Flash. Note that Palm and PPC devices use the much more expensive SD (Secure Digital) format. Memory Stick and Secure Digital both have 128mb limits at the moment, so you're "does not hold too much data" argument is moot. Memory Stick is also not any more proprietary than the main competitor, Secure Digital. Sony was the developer of Memory Stick and pushes it, just like Panasonic (along with Toshiba) developed Secure Digital and pushes that. Both formats charge fairly large license fees. Non-Sony products are popping up all over that use Memory Sticks (especially in Japan). Portable and set-top DVD players, car stereos, and even Sony's next-gen WEGA Tv's have memory stick slots.
• Sony has pretty much dropped MagicGate and ATRAC3 outside of asia. You don't need to touch either of these to get everything out of a clie.
• Um, yes there are Stowaway keyboards for your Sony, and GPS devices for your clie, including one made by Sony themselves. There are plenty of accessories for Clies, which is the third biggest seller of PDA's in the United States. Handspring is dropping market share fast, so it won't be long until Sony is #2.
• 
  Sony makes the best Palm-based PDA's. The only downside to the NR-series, in my opinion, is the size (which isn't as big as Pocket PC's or even some PalmOS units, but is bigger than, say, Sony's T-series).

There already is a GPS addon. It may only be available in Japan though, I'm not sure.

anyone know if there are going to be any copywrite issues with these things?

Copywrite refers to writing and editing text. An example of a "copywrite issue" would be the fact that Sony's MemoryStick.org web site is full of Engrish on the front page.

On the other hand, copyright is a monopoly that the government grants to creators of original works of authorship and that said creators have twisted into a way to screw their customers.

read the Sony provided memorystick.org

MemoryStick.org is written in Engrish:

"MemoryStick Information for Developers" was renewed. The design was renewed, and it kept in mind so that it might become legible. The contents are also substantial increasingly after this.

I would have to disagree strongly. For starters, to use the Jog Dial effectively all one needs is a third party application such as PowerJog. This gives me the ability to do everything from the Jog Dial, from going through menus to clicking on buttons, while adding scrolling functionality to essentially all apps. The only things I still need to my stylus for is Graffiti and AvantGo links.

The memory stick is a godsend for people who use their handhelds to read books (I suggest Smoothy, which uses the Jog Dial to change auto-scrolling speed). I have the entire Lord of the Rings on my CLIE and don't have to pay with reduced space for my apps. Also, there are a handful of programs that are kind of large for keeping in memory but that I still want to pull out every once in a while. For example, I keep LispMe on the Memory Stick so that if I write a Scheme program in MemoPad I can move LispMe on to it just long enough to run it, not taking up any permanent space. I can think of dozens of other uses for the memory stick off the top of my head that do not involve backup, and that's without even waiting for developers to really start working it into their applications.

So the Jog Dial and the MemoryStick remain useful beyond anything the Palm Vx offers. Then we get into opinions:

I like the fact that the CLIE is narrower. It feels nicer in my hand; more like a small notepad (the paper type, people. Remember those? Very high resolution, blue lines accross a white screen-like surface? :) than the Palm Vx, which always felt a little too wide for my taste. The side effect of this is that the screen is much sharper, but not so ridiculous as the m100 which makes everything on it look like spider trails.

As far as accessories go, it is true that the CLIE is currently barren. But so was the Visor when it first came out. Sony is developing tech that allows a MemoryStick to essentially double as a Springboard Module. This in itself is enough to counter arguments about the CLIE not having accessories. And BTW, I personally like the case. :)

Finally, as to video and sound and such, I would like to point out that there are thousands of programs written for the PalmOS that are downloaded every day that the vast majority of people would look at and say "WTF? Who on earth would want to do that?" Fact of the matter is, the strength of PalmOS is that you can make it do anything without sacrificing the ease of use of the basic functions. If you want to play movies or sound and have the space on your handheld, you can, and without really bloating the interface.



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