The BBC convinced 13 year old Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for a Walkman and use it for a week. The first shock came just from seeing the thing:
[My Dad] had told me it was big, but I hadnt realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.
It gets worse from there. Wearing the 30 year old device on his belt (it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets) Scott felt embarrassed at the attentions of passersby as they stared and shouted insults.
Other problems included lack of a shuffle mode (I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down rewind and releasing it randomly), terrible battery life (three hours), sound quality (wed disagree even a tape sounds better than the average MP3), and capacity (twelve tracks in your pocket!).
Scott had some operational troubles, too: It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. The ultimate insult comes at the end, though:
Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?
Ouch!
Giving up my iPod for a Walkman [BBC via BBG]
Photo: miniteca.org/Flickr
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by publisher on June 29, 2009
