Rating: Summary: Buy an extended warranty - you'll need it!!! :( Review: I'll state up front that I do not own a Zen Xtra and have not used one at all. But you might find my review useful, nonetheless. I purchased a Jukebox 3 from Creative almost a year ago. Two months ago, an internal part failed (NOT due to customer abuse; it just failed). I got an RMA from Creative, sent my player in to them for repairs. It took them twice as long to get to my unit as they said it would. Moreover, they want a total of $107 to repair it. (This includes the $20 that you have to pay up front, just to get them to look at your player.) If Creative offered a 12-month warranty on their MP3 players, I'd be covered. But they offer only a 3-month warranty (on all of their players, including the Zen Xtra). So I'm screwed. But you don't have to be. If you buy a Creative MP3 player, be sure to get the optional extended warranty. Or better yet, buy from another company that stands behind their products with a 12-month warranty. It's really a shame, because otherwise, Creative MP3 players are very good, and have the best sound quality of any players on the market.
Rating: Summary: Excellent way to carry your music collection! Review: After investigating a multitude of player options, I asked for and received the 60 GB Zen Xtra for Christmas. Despite its being slightly larger than the iPod, I must say I was surprised to see how small it was when I unwrapped the box! I am ripping my CD collection into 160 kbps WMA files; this gives an average of around 60-65 MB per CD, good for about 900 CDs in the ~57,000 MB of free memory available to me. File transfers are fast, nearly a song per second via USB 2.0. Several people have complained of difficulty transferring multiple songs with the same title. THIS IS POSSIBLE!! Since the Zen Xtra does not use a folder structure, the "duplicate name" problem stems from the actual file name, NOT from the song's title/artist/album. Solution? Simply configure the MediaSource software (or Windows Media Player, or your ripper-du-jour) to create file names that include artist and (especially) album names in addition to track names. Using this method, I have not once encountered a situation where a track was rejected, and I have PLENTY of duplicate tracks on live and compilation albums. Even if there happened to be identical track titles on the same disc, you could still edit the file name manually and get them both onto the player. My one issue with the MediaSource software is that, despite pulling ID3 tag data from the CDDS service, the ripping process fails to populate the "Year" field. Weird. How does it sound? To my ears, a 160 kbps WMA file sounds just as good as the source CD, and the Zen Xtra sounds just as good as a portable CD player. No complaints there. The EAX features are pretty cool, as well, as Creative has included a number of EQ adjustments that, for example, compensate for the extraneous noise encountered in a car or on a train. Navigation could be better, but there isn't really anything the Zen Xtra can't do once you've gotten comfortable with it. At the end of the day, what I wanted was a large-capacity player which allows me to easily play any album from my collection wherever I go, and the Zen Xtra's combination of price, capacity and features easily meets those criteria.
Rating: Summary: A disappointment overall Review: Its big and heavy. Fully charged the battery lasts less than 4 hours of play time. Less than an hour when downloading. The software crashes frequently during large downloads.
Rating: Summary: No Delivery Review: Amazon takes your order - Promises Christmas delivery then sends a Christmas Eve email stating that delivery is delayed until mid January due to stocking problems so you give the email in place of the gift. Then they cancel the order on January 5th because they can't get the product anyway. Their solution. A $5 gift off certificate so they can screw you again next time.
Rating: Summary: Creative ok but ipod much better Review: I have both and although the ipod is only 40gigs it is twice the player of the nomad.The jog wheel on the nomad is a joke and will break very easy,you see my nomad has been replaced twice because of that wheel,I am glad I got it from Best Buy where with the extended warranty they replace it with no problem. The poor build of the nomad is why I got the ipod.To all who swear by WMA files they must be tone deaf,AAC(MP4)that ipod uses is so much better sound and itunes works so much better than the creative software even the explorer that people are saying is so great.And yes I am a windows user and the windows itunes works great.It takes Apple to make good software for a windows machine does not say much for microsoft or creative.As for sound the person who said that creative has to be good because they make sound cards is tone deaf,the sound is crap compaired to ipod. If you are afraid to spend money and want marginal buy this other wise buy a ipod and have the best,you get what you pay for.
Rating: Summary: I love it Personally Review: Well at first I bought a 128 mb mp3 player and I said I need an upgrade. So I looked and shopped and said I will try this one. Personally I think it is excellent. Now the Headphones sound alright but it didnt sound full enough so I switched to a pair of sony's and got that fullness with the bass in it. I have only about 100 songs but it sounds great. Everybody complains you can't drag n drop the songs, well you can. You can actually drag and drop more than one song at a time. That is what I do. Walking around with it in my hand works better than in the pouch. I wouldn't use the software to rip my cds though. If you are like me and actually want your songs to sound great and dont mind taking time then try another program. Then transfer it too the Creative library. I care about sound quality rather then speed and being plain lazy. I rip the songs from my windows media player to wma format then remaster them in easy cd creator so it wont sound so flat and the sound comes out full when you put it on the Jukebox. So give it a try. If you dont like it remember you can get a refund.
Rating: Summary: Response to Mills from Canton, MA Review: This is a pretty good mp3 player. The iPod is much better. However, this review is a response to Mills, who said "With the Nomad, you can put any music in any kind of form on it, while on an Ipod, you can only put the music you download for 99 cents from Itunes on it." You are WRONG. I own an iPod, and you can play any music in any kind of form as well, the 99 cents for itunes is just one more option. In fact, it is a very good option, because it is almost perfect sound quality in a legal song for 99 cents, rather than paying $16 for a cd with only a few songs you want, or downloading a crappy quality song (which is illegal anyways) on KaZaA. So in fact, not only can the iPod play all the types of music that the Creative Labs Zen can play (they can both play all mp3s, wavs, aiffs, etc), but it can play songs downloaded from iTunes which the Zen CANNOT do.
Rating: Summary: Caveat Emptor!!! Let the Buyer BEWARE Review: Let The Buyer Beware: okay so i like this Mp3, Okay so i Liked this Mp3 Player, or rather would have liked to have liked this Mp3 Jukebox for more than 4 months. Thats Right Folks this Mp3 player Croaked on me. The customer service people were curteous but unless i want it repaired for around 50 dollars (that is what they said) i will have to buy another one. this mp3 player was fine and fun to use until it broke. the screen froze up gave me an error and when i used their handy reset button and repair/reboot options it did little else than confirm my suspicions that their mp3 player was little more than a temporary fix. Customer service did NOT know what was wrong although they thinked jogging might have hurt it somehow. i recommend that if you do buy this temporary mp3 player that you keep it in one place Forever. Pros: sound quality easy to use interface Storage capacity Cons: short battery life rechargable battery a hassle if u forget charger (D'oh!) Temporary use only
Rating: Summary: Digital audiophiles look out! Review: Great sound but I have refined my music collection over the years. It's about 5,000 songs in 251 folders and subfolder. I spent 12 hours copying the whole thing over to the Nomad's music library -- it put everything into one folder. About 20% didn't make it because -- like most rare or foreign music -- it didn't have the latest ID3 tags. I could spend a few months fixing all 5,000 songs to have the same file info, or send it back. IF one of you early adopters has figured out a way for the Nomad musical software to look through, and play from the data folder, please share. Thanks. My email is crook@write.com
Rating: Summary: Better than Ipod Review: The Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra is by far better than Apple's Ipod. The Nomad isn't much bigger than an Ipod, and it can hold 20 GB more than the Ipods with the largest space. When I first got my Nomad, I took it out of the box, plugged it in to charge, and turned it on, I immediently got to hear music that was prerecorded on it. Next, I put my CD's, mp3's, and other kinds of music on it. That all took less than five minutes. Buy the 60 GB Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra while the price is still low, and you'll be glad you did.
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