Sony sucks.
HP just rebadge Apple PC Ipods, no idea why.
And the iRiver is better, as it just plugs in and works (win Win 2k/XP). You can copy files directly over AFAIK, and support for mp3/WMA/OGG.
Sony = sucks total ass, in every possible way. (And when some of my mp3's and wmas got converted to ATRAC3 they were rendered unlistenable to on my Minidisc player, they had pops and all kinds of crap, the disadvantage of forcing someone to reconvert lossy compressed files)