I'm looking into getting a sony Hi-MD Minidisc player/recorder as an alternative to limited storage mp3 players. If you haven't checked them out, do it.

Anyways, I have a few questions:

1) Has anyone successfully used linux to store music to a minidisc player of any sort, the old standard or Hi-MD? Success or failure stories?

2) The Sony Hi-MD devices can supposedly store files of any type, so I wonder if the device itself would be recognized as USB mass storage? Anyone can comment on this?

3) If it isn't possible to use the device natively in linux, I do have WinXP available via vmware for the few rare things I can't do with wine. Has anyone used USB devices with WinXP via vmware and could comment on compatibility and such? The Sony players come with software that lets you store music to a disc @ 100x speed (so they claim). If this software would work well in vmware that is a viable option for me as well. I've never actually tried to use a USB device with WinXP via vmware and I don't have one handy to test with.

4) It doesn't seem that the Sony Hi-MD devices have ogg support. I rip every CD I buy to ogg format to have the tracks handy for listening. How is ogg->mp3 conversion quality-wise if that's my only option for getting those tracks onto the device. I have no idea if the Sony software supports converting unsupported formats or if I have to do it manually.

How about some reading; http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14200

A couple of quotes from the article;

Now, a common and valid complaint about MiniDisc was that they were tied to Sony in that you were forced to use Sony's ATRAC format and SonicStage software.

And of course SonicStage is only available on Windows, not on OSX or Linux.....

nice find.

"However, a major malfunction remains: SonicStage. Even though each Hi-MD player can be used as a mass storage device under windows, Linux, OSX, and even BeOS, you cannot just drag/drop .mp3s onto it. You are forced to use SonicStage."

That answers a lot of my questions, I'd have to run SonicStage via WinXP under VMware... definitely something to consider.