Well as a long time Minidisc user and user of Sony MP3/Atrac walkmans, after trying to use Windows Media Player 11 to upload a few audiobooks to a new NWZ-A818 flash walkman all I can say is "come back Sonic Stage...all is forgiven"
See...I dont use my portable devices for music very much, I am a huge consumer of audiobooks...It is essential that I can easily create playlists for sometimes a hundred or more tracks on an audiobook...if they get out of the correct order...the book listening experience is ruined
SS 4.3 is really good at this for both Minidisc and my battered NW-A1200 Atrac/MP3 walkman, for all the complaints about SS, in the end it evolved into a pretty slick piece of specific sofware that just works pretty well
Problem with these new Sony devices is that the Sony hardware is superb, but WMP 11 attempts to work with so many different devices, and it tries to be too clever...I have given up and gone back to my SS compatible devices
IMO, the fantastic little Sony NW-A818 walkman is essentially useless for my purposes...I just cant be bothered to struggle with WMP 11
I guess we are never satisfied, everybody complained about SS, but I think its really good now.....now we are stuck with Windows Media Player...I downloaded Sony Media transfer for walkman ver 1.2....its useless, Sonic stage was a sophisticated product in the end that was designed specifically for Sony products.....I like it !!

I agree that SS has evolved into a decent piece of software. However, to be fair, had I not lived through 2.2 and 3.X versions, I might not be so enthused. Regardless, if for nothing else it is perfect for the NW-E10X models, but I am still wishing a couple defaults weren't there when using uploading units...for example uploads w. copy protection, and only two SP upload conversion choices (256/PCM).

I dislike both equally, but can you be more specific about how WMP 11 gets playlists out of order?