Sony Portable Mini-Disc Player/Recorder (MZR500PC)
Great MD player
I have had this player for 2 weeks now and I am very happy with it. When you opoend the box you get - One sony MZR500PC mini disk player. It has a metalic blue aluminum top, and a dark clear blue plastic bottom. The plastic is very tough, and won't break. Also you get a whimpy 3 inch 3.5 mm to 3.5 mm headphone jack cord (Standard size headphone jack), a pair of decent headphones - good bass reflex, but don't &quot;bounce&quot;, a Instruction manuel and a PC link, which you just pop in to your USB port and windows wil do the rest, no cd reqiured - (Unless you dont have some drivers that are on the Win9x, Win Me, Win 2000 or XP. it IS compatible with Windows XP, theres a booklet on how to instal it on Windows XP. If you have WinAmp or another Mp3 player that alows you to create a play list, you can start it up and just let you MD player sit there recording. If you have the time you can title a song while its recording, which helps in finding the song you want to listen too. Whats really nice is the 35 to 40 hour playback on a SINGLE double a (AA) sized battery. Sony claims 48 hours, but if you stop the MD (MiniDisk) or any thing else that drains batteries, you get less time of play back. No AC adapter is included, but if you have rechargeable AA batteries you can use those. Battery lifes are as follows - play Back 30 - 40 hrs. Recording - 6 - 10 hours. The display on the unit has a volume meter spanning across the top, 5 point battery meter to the left, then track lenght, record time left or remaing track time is displayed (Changed from option menu), then there is a 6 character disply to the right (shows track names - MD title - Menus) There are not many buttons on this MD player, every thing from Bass Boost to record quality is done through menus. You press a botton and a menu will pop up - Edit, Bass, R-Mode (Record Mode) and so on. There is a Hold button o0n the back of the player (IF its turned on, when you press a button it won't do anything. Youd use this if youput it in your pocket. Its about 3 x 3 inches and less then am inch thick. Sound qualitys can be set for - Stereo (Full CD quality) Mono (Mono but still cd quality - Twice as long record) LP2 (Twice as long record + stereo, cant tell the diffrence) then theres LP4 (Four times as long record) which doesn't sound good. I don't know why they have this, some say its for lectures... but theres no microphone jack on this model. If you want one upgrade to the MZR700PC. Also theres no remote. And theres no space for a remote. Ill just clear up what jacks it HAS. 1 - Headphone  2 - Optical In  3 - Digital in (2 and 3 are in the same jack, its weird, but a optical cord goes through the jack to another jack because its like a half inch long plug. Phew, long sentence.) and finally it has a 3 Volt DC in plug. One thing i thought was funny is I live in Maryland, which is called MD. Get it? (Forced laughs)<BR>All in all this is a great Mini Disk player AND recorder. Very small, well built and conserves power well.