Rating: 
Summary: Yes, you CAN drag-and-drop!
Review: Seems no one has figured out that with the Nomad Explorer program you _can_ drag and drop songs into your player very easily. You can even use Explorer to directly edit ID3 tags on your Nomad. I have never even used Creative Mediasource to manage my tunes -- the Explorer is literally all you need if you already have CD-ripping capabilities.It's a good player -- the interface is surprisingly easy to use and the music is great-sounding (throw away the earbuds that come with the player). Battery life is not as long as I had expected (something closer to 10 hours), but it is probably because all my mp3's are at least 192k encoded for high quality. Sure, it's not as sexy as the iPod, but it sure is a heck of a lot more cost-effective.
Rating: 
Summary: Great player!
Review: First of all, I want to address all of the complaints about the software. Yes, the media source software is not that great, however if you look a little more closely in your "My Computer" window, you will notice a new Icon called "Nomad Explorer." Nomad Explorer is the drag-and-drop feature that everyone seems to be looking for. This is fully integrated with Windows Explorer, and it is already included! This is the only way that I have been transferring music. It is very easy to transfer files, and also makes it easy to fine tune your ID3 tags by right clicking on whole groups of files to easily adjust genre, artist name, or album name. For the price and the storage capacity, the Zen Xtra is an amazing product. I have a large collection of live shows that I wanted to be able to keep at a high quality bit rate and take where ever I go. 60 GB lets me do that. The only complaints that I have so far are that you need the disc to install the device on another computer. I'd like to be able to plug it in to any computer and have it ready to transfer files, especially as a data storage drive. I also replaced the earphones. I would like it to support lossless files such as flac and shn. I am hoping this can be added with a firmware upgrade in the future (you can easily upgrade via their website). I would absolutely recommend the Zen Xtra to anyone interested in a great jukebox with a huge hard drive, great sound, and low price.
Rating:
Summary: Machine-nice, Software- blows chunks
Review: To all that think this is bulky think back to walking down the street with a freakin boom box on your shoulder that held 1 cassette tape. I purchased this for $320 on sale for $350 opened a Amazon card another $30 off. Anyone who wastes their money on an I-pod is a fool. When you look at Dollar per GB you cant lose with this machine. On the flip side WHAT IN THE WORLD was Creative thinking with this software? Drag and drop would have been much more appropriate, not to mention the fact that my whole Mp3 collection is ID3 tagged yet 50 some odd songs come up as unknown.Message to Creative: DRAG AND DROP, DRAG AND DROP.
Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT 60 GIGS FOR $400 !!!
Review: Pros: 60 GIGS OF STORAGE!!!!
Great sound quality and useage of EAX
Nice design
free cover and earbuds (come with almost all cd players and mp3 players, but its a freebie)
14 hours of life!
Cons: Flip cover
Earbuds kinda hurt, not soundwise, comfortwise
People think it's crappy because no remote, (LAZY) Comments: All in all this is a great mp3 player, i like the lcd screen, i use creative sound blaster audigy ex sound card, and to me sound blaster makes the best sound hardware EXCELLENT mp3 player, and if u dont like the software, use the notmad software, search for nomadness.net or sumtin to see how notmad is, drag and drop is in notmad!!!
Rating:
Summary: Truthfully...
Review: The Nomad Zen Xtra is simply put, much better than the iPod. Face it, you're essentially purchasing a glorified sound card and hard drive hybrid. In the hard drive arena, what matters is size: Nomad Wins. As for the sound card aspect, Creative Labs entire business is SOUND, they're responsible for the industry standard Sound Blaster line. The iPod gets trampled by the Nomad in the sound quality department. Creative Mediasource, the program bundled with the player, is not as difficult to learn as other reviewers have mentioned. In fact, I didn't find it difficult to learn at all. It installed without any problems, and within minutes after rebooting I had set my preferences and begun to rip my huge CD collection. I was pleasantly surprised by the speed achieved by my piddly USB 1.1 connection; unless you're hooked on crystal meth, you won't be disappointed with the USB transfer speeds. Any other problems are extremely minute. There's no remote control? Stop whining and dare to actually touch the product you purchased. The controls are difficult to use with one hand? Quit fiddling with the other one for a couple of seconds to use your Nomad, and you'll do just fine. Can't transfer files named using nonstandard characters? Rename them, you won't die, and they'll sound just as good. Death to Apple!
Rating: 
Summary: Get "Notmad" to Make This Worthwhile!
Review: 28 Dec 2003 Update - I've boosted the rating on this to three stars from one star, because of "Notmad Explorer" from Red Chair Software (Google "Notmad"). This is software makes *all* the difference. True drag and drop, total Windows integration (such as "Send To..." menu), transfers at 50+ megabits per second, and the built-in SQL database deals with my 16,000+ songs. Happily transfers full quality WMA, or supports transcoding on the fly. Creative should bundle this. To use it, install the latest Creative driver, the lastest Creative firmware, and do NOT unseal the software CD that came with the Nomad. To others who say the Nomad Explorer that comes with the product allows drag'n'drop of music direct from Windows: unless you've got some version other than Creative's, it doesn't allow drag and drop of high quality WMA files on XP SP1. Drag and drop a high quality file, and you get a data folder instead. The so called Explorer interface is a trick, a small portable device app that runs when you select the Nomad from My Computer. Using Notmad Explorer, I'm keeping the device after all. * * * 5 Dec 2003 Review - Two good things, and two nasty problems with this iPod wannabe. The good things: (1) It can play VBR WM9 audio (variable bitrate) even in the 135 - 215 kbps range. This is how I encode all my music for CD transparency. (If you haven't tried it, go into WMP9 advanced options and change the codec to variable and the slider to this bitrate range. You'll like it.) This level of sound quality is excellent in a portable device, although the volume level is quite low. (2) It's the most songs per cubic inch in this small of a form factor. :-) The two bad things: (1) You cannot drag'n'drop music onto it. Although USB2.0, it doesn't show as a drive, it shows as a portable device. You have to use Creative's "MediaSource" software or WMP "Copy to Device". This is horribly clunky, and unforgivable these days. But with two ways to get music onto it, shouldn't be too much of a problem, right? Wrong. (2) WMP "Copy to Device" wants to re-encode down to 128kbps, thus losing quality. (Encodes of encodes are doubly bad; better off ripping at 128kbps in the first place.) MediaSource will transfer any bitrate without re-encoding, however it will only transfer things that are in its own music library. The big gotcha -- you cannot add things to MusicSource library if they have non-ASCII characters, ie, anything not on an American typewriter. This means if you have a library of foreign music (much of mine has titles in Cyrillic) you cannot add them to MediaSource, and therefore you cannot transfer them to the device. These days, when your CDs and tracks can be instantly titled by CDDB or WMP9, and a 2.0+ ghz computer can rip songs in a matter of seconds allowing you to rip a CD every couple minutes, who wants to spend weeks and weeks retitling CDs just so a xenophobic MusicMatch can import them? By definition, if you want a 60GB portable music player, you have thousands of CDs and tens of thousands of songs. No, renaming them won't kill you, but it'd be months before you'd finally get to listen to your music... I talked to Creative Labs about this. The answer: "Perhaps you may wish to download some english songs and play it[sic]. Hope that solves your issue." There's no good reason to manufacture a media player that cannot have music simply drag'n'dropped onto it through the normal Windows XP (or Mac OSX) interface. There's even less reason to manufacture a media player that cannot have foreign titled music transferred to it. It's just dumb, and I'm returning this one. Too bad, because it's an otherwise nice device (even if you can't find a "stop" button, only "pause").
Rating:
Summary: OK, so it's not the Ipod
Review: So what...it's a little bigger, but what great value. I got the 40GB version for $319. Sound is crisp and flawless. I recommend getting real headphones...the included earbuds get painful shortly. To answer the reviewer above...Yes, you can play randomly across your entire collection. Or pick some subset of songs which could be a selection of artists, albums, and/or individual songs. Then play randomly, or in any order you choose. I had an Archos Jukebox and had always wanted this feature as well. The battery life is terrific...in excess of 12 hours without charging. The software is easy to use...very easy to organize the music on the Jukebox as well as on your computer. Very comparable to itunes, IMHO. The LCD readout is crisp and easy to read. It looks and feels solid. I have the same issue with the case as mentioned in the reviews above. On the whole, I am thrilled with this unit.
Rating:
Summary: Random, anyone? - Reply
Review: Hi. I'm the guy who wrote a 5-star review earlier. I have downgraded my rating to 4 stars (really 4-1/2), because the device has frozen up several times, causing me to have to press the "reset" button with a bent paper clip, which I now keep handy in the bottom of the case. (Resetting is a minor inconvenience, but you do not lose any data. But with 870 CDs (11,000 tracks) saved on my Zen Xtra, it takes about half an hour to re-build the library after pressing reset.) Still, I love this little device. I take it everywhere I go. Hopefully Creative will upgrade its firmware to fix this problem; I have already downloaded 2 upgrades to the firmware since early November. In response to the guy's question about random playback, the answer is YES. You can either select "Play any track" in the "Playback mode" menu, or you can select "All tracks" in the main menu and then select "Shuffle" in the "Playback mode" menu. I think either of these will work. But you can definitely switch between "random" playback and "artist/album." Hopefully this helps.
Rating:
Summary: Random, anyone?
Review: What I want to know ----Can it, or any of the other jukeboxes, randomize YOUR WHOLE COLLECTION? Can it switch between random vs sort by album/artist? I have an Archos, and while I could set up music one way (Random) vs the other (Albulm/Artist) I WNAT TO BE ABLE TO DO BOTH AND SWITCH BACK AND FORTH! So tell us what's up, K? :-) -note I can not rate this Item-- I dont know it...had to put in a # to post , so I chose a 3...
Rating: 
Summary: Not for me
Review: This is Creative Lab's attempt to copy Apples iPod but after using this thing for 2 days I'm now happy that I was able to change it to the real iPod instead. Pro:
- more storage
- metal case
- price Con:
- the iPod is really not to be called tiny, but the Zen Xtra actually feels bulky and heavy
- the case is a joke. You have to take the Zen out of your pocket and flip up the cover to see the display.
- a hassle to operate with one hand
- the user interface is not intuitive or user friendly (they probably did not dare to copy apples touch wheel)
- the included software is even worse. You definately need some time to figure it out. Just annoying.
- Take both models for a run! I had to switch off the Zen Xtra after 15 minutes because a lot of cracking noises were just too much to take. I'm not sure if it was the headphone connection or the skip protection not working properly or a combination. That was the point where I decided to go for the iPod
- The ear buds are badly designed and did not fit. Be prepared to buy a new set right away. And they have no remote control funktion!
- The USB1 or USB2 data transfer is just painfully slow in comparism to iPod's iLink (firewire) transfer with my Sony notebook. I have nearly 3500 songs on my computer. The synchronize (USB2) took more than an hour with the Zen and less than 25 minutes with iPods firewire connection. When you use an iPod you experience a product that is surprisingly functional, well designed and just fun to operate.
You do not feel like the first person to test the equipment and then have to live with it's shortcomings. If you desperately need a 60 GB model rather wait for the next update of Apple's iPod. Like in the past the premium model's price won't get up. Only the specifications will get better. If you desperately need to save some money choose a smaller iPod or take the Zen Xtra and suffer like I did initially ...
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