for my birthday i had one of these:
Sony nwz-a818

when i first had it i had problems getting my computer to work with it but that was fixed with a quick xp re-install (it needed doing anyway, it was veeeeerrrrryyyyy slooowww) anyway, since then I've had no problems. until last night when i tried to make a playlist. i created a playlist in winamp and saved it as a *.m3u playlist which basically everything nowadays supports. except my walkman. on the root of its memory it has a folder called "playlists" so i copied it in there. a message came up basically sying that the device didn't support this format and it could ony bee put here for storage not for use. i ignored it but it was right, it didn't work. so i went throug all the formats that winamp could save playlists as but none would work. i tried putting the files in different places and i can't get anything to work. so I've had a look around on the sony support website and came across this: here
first, does anyone know if there is an alternative free version (though if there isn't, I'm sure i can find a 'free' version). second, does anyone know if this software will actually work and transfer playlists?

some extra info,

no, i can't create playlists on the device
yes, i have tried windows media player (oh the shame)
no, I'm not re-installing xp again

anyone?

ahh, now this is why i bought this mp3 player. I've always loved sony because of the quality and indestructability (i have a 20 year old cd player that only died a few months back by sony) but was always put off by sonicstage. i have a minidisc  player that is brilliant, except i have to use sonicstage to use it WHY???

anyway, this is the first mp3 player that sony has made that doesn't use sonicstage, in fact, as far as i know its completely incompatible as the mp3  player cannot play atrac3.

so, anyone?

You probably have to use SonicStage to make the playlists but you don't have to convert the files...

he has now fixed this problem. another dead thread has been created...

i didn't fix it,  i came up with a rather crappy workaround. all i did was get all the sons that i wanted in the playlist and put them all together in a folder and  batch renaming them to put numbers in front in the right order. i then copy it onto the mp3 player and play the music in folder (rather than album) mode. the problem with using this method though is that it wastes space on the mp3 player (i have about 50 mb free) and also if i play music  in any other mode like album mode, some songs  show  up twice  because they are also in the folder that i created as a playlist.

I'll call sony tonight.