Ducks

....look at the cute duckies...awww....

Well, well, well...

In the dim and distant past pretty much every bit of Hi-Fi and consumer electronics I owned was Sony kit.

You paid more but got a top quality product.

In time other manufacturers began to raise the quality bar up to (and beyond) the Sony level, but the Sony *brand* was always more expensive.

Being geared more towards quality than brand loyalty I began to buy a more mixed bag of kit.

Then Sony decided they were big and important enough to force their customers into their over-priced proprietary Memory Stick *standard*. Since then, I haven't bought a single Sony product. Why would I lock myself in?

If their move toward SD continues I might begin to consider buying Sony again. (Although not this particular overpriced piece of poo)

Well..

Although it's a horribly pointless device, has a typical Sony-small-camera fiddly interface and is accompanied by the most nauseatingly Barleyesque lifestyle PR photography imaginable, the software's crap and produces distinctly mediocre images...

..at least Sony have learned on the memory stick thing! It always takes them years of lost sales- for example, the Walkman digital fiasco with compulsory ATRAC transcoding. However, they are learning. This is good, compact digitals are an insanely competitive market these days, and hobbling youself due to management stupidity is a problem, even if you're the size of Sony.

Good on yer, Sony. You have a very tarnished reputation due to the last few years, maybe this is a sign that some people with clues are starting to make decisions..