The rumor mill has been running rampant with whispers about Sony's latest version of its Walkman S-series, and now the company's making it all official. No, dear reader, this is not the Walkman S-series of a year ago. This Sony Walkman S540, available next month, rocks a couple of mini speakers to annoy anyone near you, it's 10.2mm thick so it's easier to slip in your pocket, and it has longer battery life, 42 hours of audio and 6.5 hours of video, according to Sony.

We'll have to give these speakers a close listen to know for sure, but the diminutive drivers are packed with tricky tech that Sony says makes them sound good even though they're so small. Using whiz-bang verbiage like "linear phase correction," "digital linear phase speaker system," and "virtual bass," Sony's getting creative. We'll believe it when we hear it.

But look at those pictures. This is a beautifully designed player, with a nice sharp new 2.4-inch 320x240 screen, aiming underneath the iPod nano with an 8GB model retailing for $110 and a 16GB for $130. Dang it, Sony should own this media player market, just like it did with the Walkman decades ago. Even though the company lagged far behind Apple at the beginning of this decade, it's doing a pretty good job of playing catch-up now. But it just might be too little, too late.

Press release