Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal writes a scathing review of Sony's new NW-HD1. His verdict: "While the new Sony is smaller than the iPod and has much better battery life, it is markedly inferior overall. It has a confusing, complex user interface that makes it hard to use; weak software for the PC; an oddball music format that makes loading it with songs tedious; and a companion music download service that offers less than Apple's." He also talks about the whole transcoding of music: "I used a very modest collection of 431 standard MP3 files. SonicStage 2 refused to transfer 15 of the files, posting a nonsensical error message. After that, it took an agonizingly long two hours and 13 minutes to transfer the remaining 416 tracks to the Walkman. By contrast, Apple's iTunes software transferred all 431 songs to an iPod in about four minutes." Ouch. And for the most part he didn't like the interface the most: "But the Walkman's biggest weakness is its lousy user interface, which is dense and confusing. The SonicStage 2 software and the Connect music store are also badly designed. " He ends the review with this advice, "until Sony fixes the multitude of sins in this product, steer clear of it."