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Sony have seen the light in another area, too. Their latest MiniDisc Walkman, the MZ-RH1, can be used to extract ATRAC files from MDs and save them in other formats like mp3. Until now, MD has been a closed system, with no way of getting music data out except by making an analogue copy. Sony's MD management software was especially restrictive and hogtied by DRM considerations. No longer. Mind you, MD is on the way out and maybe they'e belatedly giving MD owners a way to switch to another format!
But I think Sony are beginning to realize that people want flexibility and are reluctant to buy gadgets which depend on proprietary formats. I must say I was surprised and gratified to find that the Reader accepts plain text, RTF and PDF. It's just a pity you can't use it as an external drive and have to use Connect (which I reckon must have been written in a hurry and is seriously deficient in features).
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