Got a Net MD? Sick and tired of OpenMG Jukebox? I know I am – it sucks… half my tracks don’t convert properly, so are just however many minutes of silence. Plus, it doesn’t properly support any form of MP3 and has that annoying “Check-In/Out” feature.

Anyway, I was searching around for an alternative method to OpenMG and stumbled across this little gem. You’ll need Nero Burning Rom + the Imagedrive function and Sony Simple Burner (should come with your Net MD). To enjoy a simple method of transferring MP3s or other music files onto your Net MD, follow these steps…

  1. Open Nero, select Audio CD from the presets and drag all the MP3’s you want into it. Nero is far less picky about formats and sample rates. I found this method foolproof.
  2. Save or ‘Burn’ your CD to your hard drive (not your burner). Nero will give you a default filename of ‘image.nrg’
  3. Use Nero’s Imagedrive (bundled with Nero) to mount the .nrg (CD-image) you just created. Lets say Drive ‘F’ for this example.
  4. Select your ‘virtual F’ CD drive in Simple Burner and burn it to Minidisc. When you are done, trash the large .nrg file sitting on your desktop.

Advantages of this Method:

  • You are using reliable software.
  • Check-in/check-out is avoided.
  • Unlike OpenMG, files aren’t left all over your hard drive.
  • You can delete and re-arrange the downloaded tracks on your MD without having to resort to connecting it back to your PC.
  • It is faster and doesn’t thrash your hard drive.

There you go… you should now be on the way to Net MD bliss…