Rating: 
Summary: Zen versus iPod
Review: I just got a 40GB iPod to replace my Zen (a 20GB model). While the iPod's form factor is much nicer, here's where the Zen is better.Software: A lot of people complain about the Creative Software, but I actually find Creative MediaSource Organizer to have some strengths over iTunes. First, the Zen lets you sync to more than one computer. The iPod is a one way only machine - from computer to player. The Zen is an outstanding way to shuttle music between sources, you can't do this on the iPod (except for a cumbersome work-around using the iPod as a hard drive instead of a player). Second, the "automatic" sync on Creative lets you review the songs before it begins its transfer. Since the iPod lacks this review feature on its auto-sync and it only allows one-way transfers, the first time I connected my iPod to my laptop, I wiped out the 20GB of music I had transferred from my desktop to the iPod. If the hard drive on your computer should fail, better have your music backed up somewhere or its gone! The Zen serves as a back-up device as well as a player. Third, Creative software allows you to keep two windows open to look at both the content on the player and the computer. Only thing missing from Creative is a CD burner. Lastly, iPod/iTunes will not play WMA formatted songs. If you have a lot of those, be prepared to convert to MP3. iTunes does what Apple is famous for, makes software that works for the less computer saavy. For those of us that like to tinker, I think Creative offers some advantages. Player controls: Here's where the iPod drives me nuts. The player controls are too easy to hit accidentally. If you happen to push the wrong button, you can wipe out the order of songs you had put in. The iPod also does not let you see what's coming up next on the player. Zen allows you to scroll up and down the song list selected on the player. It also lets you remove songs from the play order. If you bring up an album, but absolutely hate some of the tracks, the Zen will allow you to delete that from the playing order. You have to skip to the next track when your hated song comes up with the iPod. Lastly, you cannot manage anything on the iPod itself. While you can create a temporary playlist, you can't store it permanently, delete songs, search very easily, etc. None of these features are available because of the iPod's 1-way transfers - you cannot make changes on the iPod that are premanent. Again, the iPod is a beautiful thing to look at and touch, player controls are less functional. I think the iPod versus Zen typifies differences between Apple and Win machines. Win software can be a little cranky, but much more easier to customize to your needs. With Apple, you get a good product, but you get it the way Apple wants you to have it. If I had to do this again, I might get the 40GB Zen. Its ability to serve as a back-up for my music collection is a huge plus.
Rating:
Summary: The Best iPod Alternative
Review: I shopped around for a while before buying a hard-drive MP3 player. I read reviews, compared specs, and visited user forums. Despite all the hype about iPods, I knew I wanted something different, because I wanted more storage than the iPod I could afford would offer, and because I wanted more flexibility in where I purchased music online. After some consideration I chose the 40GB Nomad Zen Xtra from Creative, and I have not been disappointed. I purchased it at a retail store, and got an extended warranty. First, the battery is replacable by the user, because Creative intended it to be - unlike Apple with the iPod. It was easy enough to remove the front plate, and there was only one way the battery could be inserted. Creative also sells batteries via its website, so there's no shipping off my player and waiting for it to be sent back to me with the new battery. The new organizer software that ships with the Nomad Zen Xtra couldn't be easier to use. Point the "Media Sniffer" to your music files and let it do the rest. You can create playlists, drag & drop songs and playlists to your player, and rip directly from CD to your player. And with USB 2.0, transferring music to your player is incredibly easy. You can also delete songs from the player itself, and create playlists - on the fly - on your player. The sound is great, and the volume is more than satisfactory for commutes and shutting out external noise. I thought I'd have to buy a set of headphones to use with it, but the included earbuds work quite well. They could be more comfortable, but no complaints in the sound department. I've played around with the equalizer settings and am satisfied at the range of choices I have there too. There are plenty other features that I haven't checked out, but I'm sure I soon will. It ships with a carrying case that has a belt clip on it. However, I don't like to carry it on my belt because the clip isn't secure and the case can slip off. It happened to me once. So now I keep it in my pocket. Also, the carrying case that came with mine covers up the display, so even though the side controls are reachable, I have to open it up to see the display. It would have been better to have some sort of window on teh carrying case, so you could see the display without opening it. That's my only real complaint about the Nomad Zen Xtra, though.
Rating: 
Summary: Buggy player software.
Review: I bought the player as a gift for my wife. Unfortunately, nearly every time she turns it on, it needs to "rebuild" the library. After consulting with Creative email tech support, I reformatted its disk and reloaded its firmware. This didn't fix the "rebuild" problem, but did eliminate a tendency for the player to freeze completely on occasion. Creative told me that they are not aware of any firmware bugs that could cause the problem, and didn't offer to swap the unit so that they could investigate the probem(s) themselves. Unfortunately, Creative's software isn't stable yet and the company tech support is unresponsive. I hope your experience is better than mine has been. In the meanwhile, I'm going to wait a year before purchasing from them again.
Rating:
Summary: Review for Folks new to mp3s
Review: I purchased this mp3 player just last night after doing some scouting around. Here's a basic run-down from what I learned: Flash card memory vs. Hard Drive ( i.e. Why does a 256 mb player cost $...and a 40 GB (40,000 mb) player only cost $...?) mp3 players have either flash card memory or a hard drive in them. The flash card memory is more expensive but is very light and compact. That's why you have these things that can be keychain size. Tiny! mp3 players of this kind of memory are typically small and light and have between 64 mb - 1.5 GB of memory. I am averaging 4.5 mb per song, to give you an idea of how many songs you can get by the amount of memory. (1 GB = 1,000 mb) Hard drives (this is what most iPods have - and just about all mp3 players over 3-5 GB of memory). Cheaper to produce, holds a lot, heavier and has moving parts which means it's a little more prone to damage from being banged around. That said, they are pretty sturdy machines and I wouldn't let this dissuade you from getting an mp3 with a lot of memory. Just be aware of it. This explains why you see what appears to be such weird pricing on mp3 players. A 256 mb player (roughly 60 songs for me) is about $... But a 30 GB (30,000 mb) player (roughly 6,650 songs) sells for $...! It's because the 256 player uses flash memory (smaller/lighter) and the 30GB uses a hard drive. That's the first thing to understand. So consider what you're going to use the device for. If you're a jogger and you want to strap it to your arm, I'd recommend flash memory. If you want to listen to tunes while you travel, I'd get a hard drive because you can put so much on the thing - including audio books. REVIEW OF ZEN XTRA - 40GB The device is larger than an iPod of similar capacity. This didn't bother me too much because it's still a decent size. It comes with a good case that fits it snuggly. The front cover (which you remove to take out the battery) feels flimsy but when snapped on, the device still feels pretty solid. As some other reviewers noted, after it was connected to the computer for a bit, it somehow stopped reading the player so I had to replug it. It did not lock up my computer or require a reboot. The software lets you pop in a CD and then scans the internet to name the artist, track name and album name. Extremely convenient. Then it rips the tunes into mp3s and puts them on your computer. You can even skip that step and rip them directly from the cd to the player. (won't leave copy on your computer.) The pros and cons of it: Great price. The iPod is $...more for the same amount of memory. I thought the software was decent enough - it wasn't complicated to learn at all. The scroll button is sort of annoying to push - a nice button would be nicer but eh, not a big deal. It also stores data so I can see myself placing some data files on here. It is slightly larger than an iPod, no doubt about it. For me, that was the only drawback. I'm really happy with this purchase. Also, when I installed the software, it said that Windows XP hadn't approved something with the drivers, etc - and that continuing it install may cause instability. If you're like me, that will definitely make you pause. After I reviewed the manual (a pdf file included on the cd), I felt better because they warned you about the message and said it wouldn't cause problems and, in fact, it hasn't. So if you have XP, be prepared for this and don't be alarmed. If you are out for an mp3 player with a lot of memory and do not want to spend $..., I think this is a great purchase and strongly recommend it. I would have liked to have given it 4 1/2 stars docking that 1/2 star only for the size.
Rating:
Summary: Great product , greater with addons
Review: This is important. Make sure you are running the most recent firmware and drivers from Creative. Recent updates have done loads for stability. Also, I use Notmad from RedChair software for manipulating the data on the Zen Xtra (40Gb). This software takes managing the device to EXACTLY where it needs to be. It also has a web based streamer with it to play songs via WinAMP streaming from other machines. The cons to the unit is that it has a history of headphone and USB jack problems, plus the faceplate is a little to quick to pop off when the case is not on it. The case annoyingly, covers up the face and power jacks. The power jack isn't a big deal, but the face is. Cutting a hole (as someone recommended) is ok, but no longer provides protection like a vinyl window would. I would recommend reviewing the Zen NX cases from Vaja(vajacases.com). They are the same layout as the XTRA. Despite the small issues, the unit has performed very well with the recent firmware updates and RedChair software. Also, there is a Gnomad package for Linux.
Rating:
Summary: New to Creative Labs
Review: So far, so good. No problems at all with the product. Ripped about 70 CDs on to hard drive. Software very easy and intuitive. Takes < 1 minute a song to rip to unit. Had concern about the reviews related to unit being fragile, but have not experienced any problems so far. Controls very easy to learn. EAX - overrated. Sounds fine without it. Battery - nowhere near the claimed 14 hours, but I used the .wma format rather the mp3 to store music. Overall, what I expected for the money
Rating: 
Summary: has much to be desired
Review: the first thing that noticed was it was hard to figure out the controls. second, the face plate is not attached to unit and every time I put it down it popped of what pain [it is].
I sent it back the next day.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Garbage!
Review: I've had two of these "paperweights". This product is truly an "aging" product that has been surpassed by units from iRiver and even Dell (go figure). The case pops open very easily and often. The headphone jack will malfunction within days. A Creative Labs representative actually said the following to me: "well it can still work in your car right?" Speaking of customer service, either Creative Labs has outsourced support to some non-English speaking country or they have managed to import them here! Either way you'll get the feeling you're talking to some broken English speaking clown who hasn't got a clue about this product or the company for that matter! The "new improved" software from Creative is a disaster and even their own on-line "help group folks" (there's a joke) will tell you to purchase "red hat's" third party software! Now why in the world would you have to purchase somebody else's software right out of the box in order to make this a workable functioning product? Can you imagine buying an HP computer and having HP representatives tell you to toss their own software and use Sony's? The "EAX" sound effects are a joke. Right off the bat any use of those effects will cut the sound levels in half! Creative told me they are aware of that and that's just the way it is! Well Creative, my response to you is . . . can you spell "iRiver 120"? That's the way it is for me now and I couldn't be happier! That iRiver product works, the case doesn't open on its own, it sounds much better than the Zen Extra, has a fully functional remote, has a one year warranty as opposed to Zen's 90 day wonder product, battery lasts twice as long, the software is superb and has true drag and drop functionality and the people behind the product actually speak English and are polite!
Rating:
Summary: Don't blame Creative for your acts
Review: I don't understand how/why someone would blame Creative Labs for the fact that their player experienced damage after being dropped to the floor. Any device that relies on precision mechanicals can be damaged by a sharp jolt if the force is applied in the right way (this is particularly true if the device is in operation.) This is the nature of these types of devices. Would they make the same complaint if they dropped their camera or DVD player as well? Accept responsibility for it and move on. As for myself, the Zen Xtra has been a nice, but incremental, improvement over the original Jukebox Zen (that I still have and use.) The larger display makes navigation & album browsing much easier. The excellent sound quality of the original Zen is still there. I can't comment on the bundled Creative software because, other than the drivers, I don't use it. Instead I use the Red Chair Notmad Explorer to handle device synchronication because it can automatically transcode/down-sample files from my PC on-the-fly. This is important for my particular circumstances because I've recorded all of my CD's to WMA VBR format @ 240-355KBps. The resulting files sound great on my home system, but they eat up a fair amount of space in return. One thing that I don't think was an improvement was replacing the original's rotary thumb/navigation wheel with one that swivels up/down. The original was nice in that your could scroll through items in a list more or less as quickly as you could spin the wheel. The new one is an up/down rocker (with fixed travel,) and variable speed, but is much slower than the old scroll wheel. This may seem like a minor quibble, but if you have several hundred albums on your player (remember, this is a 60GB device,) to go through, you start to appreciate things like fast scrolling. Pros:
1 - The display on the Xtra is well designed & clear.
2 - Transport/navigation ontrols are well placed.
3 - Great sound quality (still.)
4 - Huge storage capacity.
5 - Removable batteries is a handy feature, as is being able to recharge via the USB cable. Cons:
1 - Lack of an available remote/FM tuner like the Zen (and Jukebox 3) have.
2 - Cheap, bundled ear buds.
3 - 14-hour battery life figure is a bit too optimistic. 7-9 is more like it.
4 - They should'be kept the rotary navigation wheel - IMHO.
5 - New case design completely hides the display so you have to open it to navigate. Minor quibbles aside, this is a pretty solid player that gets the important stuff right. Now if they can do something about their hideous portable media center design...
Rating:
Summary: CRASHED OUT!!!
Review: After loading my entire cd collection and making countless edits of playlists, songs, (order) ect. the machine suffered a small 10 inch fall from my t.v cabinet. It was in its padded protective cover but even still this didnt help. The Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra has waisted allot of my time and I feel Creative should spend more time developing a more stable machine rather then all the wiz-bang features it advertises.
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