pupu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I think if someone owns and primarily uses a Sony portable with the >End Search button and can't remember to press it before recording >something new, it's not Sony's fault of poor design. I think I >recorded over something once when I first got it, but learned my >lesson the first time. I don't necessarily agree with that logic. It's like saying that if Honda built a car where the brake was on the right and the accelerator on the left, and you accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake more than once, it's not Honda's "fault of poor design." A big part of designing consumer electronics is making them intuitive. Video tape and audio tape are very similar to each other, so it's intuitive that they work similarly. MD, on the other hand, is digital. It is much closer to a hard drive or other digital storage device. The advertising for MD supports this -- they make it clear that an MD track is much more like a data file on a hard drive than analog data stored sequentially on a medium that scrolls past a head. So why does Sony use a concept from the magnetic tape paradigm on a device that subscribes to the digital magnetic platter way of working with/thinking about data? That, more than anything else is what bothers me about this "feature." Personally, I think Sony probably included it on early MD recorders because at the time they were really trying to convert people from audio cassette to MD. Audio cassette users in focus groups were probably always asking the Sony reps "How to I fast forward to the end of the recorded stuff so that I can record more stuff?" Home computers and CD players weren't as ubiquitous as they are now, and audio cassettes were still pervasive. So Sony said "Let's make it record just like an audio tape deck records -- pressing record will start the recording wherever you left off playing/recording before. We'll add a button that moves to the end of the recording, since you can't actually search for the end like on a tape deck." Nowadays, most people buying MD recorders already have tons of CDs, and most also have home computers. They understand the concept of "data file" much better than those doing market research focus groups for Sony 10 years ago. Many have never even *owned* an audio cassette recorder! So for them, the "End Search" button and the "record where you stopped" behavior of Sony portables are very counter-intuitive. ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
