a modern 13-year-old's review of the Walkman
June 29th, 2009 (09:59 pm)
via iamza comes this glorious item in the BBC Magazine: a review of the Sony Walkman, from the point of view of a thirteen-year-old living in 2009. He handed in his iPod and carted the Walkman around for a week. Some complaints: it is big, it is clunky, and it only comes in one color.
Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is "shuffle", where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.
Also, it took him three days to discover that cassette tapes have two sides.
I read that article. It caused me to head-desk massively.
A Walkman is still my preferred way to listen to books on tape while running, because loading an entire .mp3 file of a book on my mp3 player clobbers its memory and I've never yet encountered a portable CD player that didn't skip if you ran while holding it (and god forbid you drop it).