With the whole tech world constantly banging on about the iPod, sometimes it's easy to forget that there are other big-name brands who also make portable music players. Sony has a long history in personal audio, and still uses the Walkman brand that it made famous with its personal cassette players. Thankfully, things have moved on and Sony now offers a comprehensive range of MP3 players including the top-of-the range A-Series and the sporty, water-resistant W Series. The B Series is the brand's entry-level offering and comprises two models - the 4GB NWZ-B163B and the 2GB NWZ-B162 that we're reviewing here. Design Available in black, blue, pink, red or green, the NWZ-B162 measures 90 x 23.3 x 15.2mm and weighs just 28g making it nice and compact and roughly the same size as a USB stick, so that it slips neatly into a bag or pocket.

Vlc bad file descriptor. Hi Thanks to the readers at Techlounge who have been posting on the Sony NWA3000 Walkman, and especially to Stevetynant for giving us the heads up on Atraclife Colloquium site, who seem to be the only place on the web to have the hack to get rid of the volume restrictor on the NWA3000 and [].

A detachable clip means that you can also attach it your clothing or bag to make it easier to access the controls. There's also a small strap hole on the back in case you want to attach it to a keyring or lanyard. The NWZ-B162's fascia features a small screen, two hard buttons (for 'back' and the 'Zap' mode), along with a large play/pause button enclosed by a round 'shuttle switch' which can be rotated slightly forwards or backwards to skip tracks or wind forwards or backwards. There are a few tiny ridges on either side of the dial, so it's easy to control.

The dial also incorporates a ring of LED lights which flash in time with the music. Depending on how you feel about such things, this is either a neat little touch of genius or the most annoying thing in the world. Thankfully, there's an option to turn this off in the settings menu. The play/pause button is perfectly located so that it sits exactly where your thumb naturally rests when holding the player - likewise for the dial that surrounds it. The bottom edge of the player is home to a hold switch to stop you accidentally knocking the controls during playback, while the top edge is home to the bass/play mode button along with the volume control and a record/stop button for the voice recorder function. Connecting the player up to your computer is a piece of cake. You don't need a lead as the top of the player can be removed to reveal a built-in USB connector.

Transferring music is very straightforward via Windows Media Player (11 or 12) or you can just drag and drop from any PC and you can also transfer directly from iTunes. The player isn't Mac compatible, but then we're guessing that if you've got an Apple computer, it's more than likely that you'll be sticking to Apple's audio devices, too. Features Switching the player on (by pressing the play button), pulls up the home menu on the tiny screen where you can choose between voice (for the voice recorder), music library and settings. The NWZ-B162 will play MP3s and non-DRM WMA files and the 2GB memory should let you get around 500 songs or so on there.