I love it when Gaz starts his crazy Sony proselytizing ;-)
"PrinceGaz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the End Search feature which
>is provided on Sony MD portables. The problem is that some people
>forget how their MD unit records and as a result overwrite existing
>material.
Yep, that's exactly correct. People forget how their particular unit
records. Maybe because it works differently than everything else?
>These people always try to blame their own stupidity on Sony's End
>Search feature
I think you meant to write "people always try to blame the stupidity of
Sony's End Search 'feature'" ;-)
>which is rather like me blaming my VCR for not winding to the end
>of the first film I recorded when I do a second without finding the
>correct position.
If MD were tape, your analogy would be valid. But it isn't tape -- it's a
random access data platform. A more accurate analogy would be a hard
drive. When you save a document onto your hard drive, do you have to
MANUALLY tell your computer to make sure it doesn't overwrite anything?
Nope. The computer assumes you DON'T want to overwrite unless you tell it
to.
You assertion that blaming a misfeature is really just user stupidity is
silly, Gaz. Is every complaint that consumers have simply due to "user
stupidity?" Of course not. There are good features and bad features. If a
feature on a consumer device doesn't make sense, or even if it is simply
different from everything else but provides no added benefit, it's not a
good feature.
People make millions of $$$ because they understand how people work/play
and they put that understanding to use when designing products. There is
a cardinal rule in product design: simpler is better. If you can do the
same thing in fewer steps, it's good design. If it takes an extra step to
do the same thing, and it provides no advantage, it's bad design. All
MiniDisc players can record from both the end of material and from the
middle. With or without ES, it takes the same steps to record from the
middle. But when recording from the end, ES requires an extra step. There
are no advantages to ES. So therefore it's bad design.
>So I come back to the original point, End Search. It has repeatedly
>been stated on this list that MD is not a replacement for CD, but a
>replacement for Tape. That being the case while home units will most
>likely be used to copy CDs etc, portable recorders are going to be
>treated more like portable tape machines by most people and the "End
>Search" that so many peeps here dislike may actually be an intuitive
>action to wind to the end of the recording.
MD is not just a replacement for tape. Tape had/has major limitations. MD
is an IMPROVEMENT over tape. We get to move tracks around by simply
pressing "move." We can delete a single track without having to worry if
new material will fit in its empty place. We can record digitally. We can
program, name, etc., etc., etc. And for all but Sony portables, when we
want to record, we don't have to fast-foward to the end of recorded
material and we don't have to worry about recording over previous
content. MD overcomes those limitations. That's why I'm using MD instead
of cassette.
>Indeed my own own portie the MZ-R3 has a nice 20-bar display running
>along the base of the LCD display which shows the used disc area, and
>current position. I dunno if this was dropped in later models but I
>can easily see where in (logical) position I am.
Even in the dark when you're recording a lecture/speech/concert? ;-)
But that really begs the question: why should you have to look?
>[Sony wanted to make MD as transparent as possible]
If Sony was really interested in user-friendliness, they would have End
Search on all their decks, or on none. Having it on some but not on
others is another horrible design decision. At least if they put it on
all decks one could argue that they believed there was some advantage to
it.
Sorry, but in the end what it comes down to is this: no matter what the
medium or recording format, you should NEVER, EVER, EVER be able to
destroy/overwrite content without confirmation. In the age of tape, the
technology wasn't available to follow this guideline. But with MD, hard
drives, etc. we have the technology. Let's use it.
What I find humorous is that in all of the debates we've had over end
search in the past year or so, I have YET to find anyone provide a
benefit of ES. It's always been simply justifications of it. I'd like
someone to explain a situation where ES would be better than the way
everyone else does it. Convince us. <grin>
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