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Sony Thinks You'll Pay $1200 For a Digital Walkman
An anonymous reader writes: The Walkman is one of the most recognizable pieces of technology from the 1980s. Unfortunately for Sony, it didn't survive the switch to digital, and they discontinued it in 2010. Last year, they quietly reintroduced the Walkman brand as a "high-resolution audio player," supporting lossless codecs and better audio-related hardware. At $300, it seemed a bit pricey. But now, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Sony has loudly introduced its high-end digital Walkman, and somehow decided to price it at an astronomical $1,200.
What will all that money get you? 128GB of onboard storage and a microSD slot to go with it. There's a large touchscreen, and the device runs Android — but it uses version 4.2 Jelly Bean, which came out in 2012. It also supports Bluetooth and NFC. Sony claims the device has 33 hours of battery life when playing FLAC files, and 60 hours when playing MP3s. They appear to be targeting audiophiles — their press release includes phrasing about how pedestrian MP3 encoding will "compromise the purity of the original signal."
What will all that money get you? 128GB of onboard storage and a microSD slot to go with it. There's a large touchscreen, and the device runs Android — but it uses version 4.2 Jelly Bean, which came out in 2012. It also supports Bluetooth and NFC. Sony claims the device has 33 hours of battery life when playing FLAC files, and 60 hours when playing MP3s. They appear to be targeting audiophiles — their press release includes phrasing about how pedestrian MP3 encoding will "compromise the purity of the original signal."
Sony was hacked. The hackers changed maliciously the selling price. It's actually $12,000.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It does come with a microSD slot!
Summation 2
This is Sony's revenge. At that price no North Korean can afford it.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
After all, it's already being discussed on Slashdot.
Yes, the standards to show up here are quite high.
i'm wondering, can there be anything in there that justifies this cost?
Low-oxygen solder. To reduce bit-slew, of course.
I had a great player geared for audiophiles, but it cost $1500 and the battery life was terrible.
And the vacuum tubes kept setting my messenger bag on fire.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
the same company can both create the problem and sell you the solution.
Sounds just like a church... Just saying.
They could have gotten $3000 for it, if they could have found a way to wedge a couple of vacuum tubes into it.
They'd probably go APE if they knew about that.
Thanks, I only needed "Tipping Point" for my Buzzword Bingo card.
:)
I already had:
"paradigm shift"
"arena"
"consumer-grade"
"on-device"
I kid, I kid, it's the meds, seriously.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..