Rating: 
Summary: Shame about the software
Review: P>Creative has recently issued a firmware update that solves the main problem mentioned below. Even though I said it couldn't be fixed in firmware, it has been. You can now search for an artist, then go to albums by that artist rather than a long alphabetical listing of tracks. Well done. Kudos to Creative for making this fix. I'd like to think I had something to do with it.Creative Labs has made one devestating error with this product, and my guess is they won't be able to fix it with a firmware upgrade. The mistake: Tracks are listed alphabetically without regard to album, artist or genre. Sounds trivial? It's not. After you go to all the trouble to categorize your music by genere, for example, opening that genre gives you an alphabetical listing of all the tracks in that genre. No reference to artists or albums. Unless you want to play all the tracks in that genre in alphabetical order, that feature is useless. Same with searching by artist. Let's say you like Joni Mitchell and you have four or five of her CDs on your player. When you open the list of artists, you can easily search for Joni Mitchell, but then all you get is an alphabetical listing of all her songs. No way to play just one of the albums. This was not a problem on the original Nomad JB. But they "fixed" it.As everyone knows, the Nomad JB3 must be used with its PlayCenter software, and almost everyone hates it. Compared to MusicMatch et al, PlayCenter is awkward and limited. The player is lovely hardware as doubtless others have noted. But the software and firmware make it almost unusable after you load up more than a few CDs. Other irritations: scrolling is much slower on the new player. You used to be able to simply hold down the scroll button and speed through a list of artists. Now you have to ... slowly through with your thumb. On a 20GB player with 400 albums or so, this is deadly. Also, after charging for some time, the unit will often simply not turn on. You have to pull out and re-insert the battery. My advice is to go with the older 20GB unit. With the latest firmware, start-up time is no longer glacial, batteries are standard AA, and the listing of albums within artists is so much more logical and quick.
Rating:
Summary: For Those Who Would Learn...
Review: I have read reviews about this product and it appears to me that many people do not LEARN about the product BEFORE writing such reviews. For instance, I have found a randomization playback mode whereas others have not. Shuffle is as random as you can get. Now, if Random Play is what people want (which is fairly close to Shuffle) then people are VERY hard to please. I was disappointed with the 6 gigabyte Nomad for its size and its various problems, but I have yet to find a problem with this unit. Granted, I just bought this unit yesterday and have already found Shuffle play. Shuffle is enough for me. It would be a good upgrade if Creative added Random in the firmware, but all in all this unit is very good. I only gave the unit 4 stars because it is a little pricey for what it offers. But, it is a lot better than the Apple iPod where you have to own an Apple/Mac computer in order to place MP3's onto its unit, which is stupid for the price THEY ask! And we all know that Apple/Mac users range in about 20% of all computer users. All in all, bottom line, Nomad Jukebox 3 is a smaller, better MP3 player and aside from the money I spent, I am enjoying it. Now, if you do get this player, make sure you get an extended warranty. I have had problems with the 6 GB player and had to return it for an even exchange. I have a 4 year extended warranty on this player, and I hope I never have to use it.
Rating:
Summary: Great MP3 Jukebox
Review: So far I haven't encountered any of the disapointments found in other reviews. In fact I have had a great experience and would recommend the unit. I have over 900 MP3s already loaded and still have over 100 CDs to load. Even when I get done, there will be plenty of storage. If you are used to carrying around a CD-Walkman than you won't notice much difference in the size of the unit. The battery performance has been great - I just took it on 8 hours of flights (roundtrip Portland, OR to Austin, TX) and still have not run out of charge. The software is pretty straightforward, but not the most convenient when migrating from Real Jukebox. You need to make a few setting adjustments, that once you find them, resolve some of the issues around getting the fields for song, artist, etc. correct. It comes with a manual in electronic form, but it would have been more convienent to have had paper. The sound quality has been better than I expected and is certainly better than the sound from my laptop which originally had all of my MP3s. I am very happy with my purchase.
Rating:
Summary: great sound
Review: This is the first mpe jukebox i've got but i read a lot before deciding which one to choose. It seems that except the iPod, they all have their problems. However, this player is (almost) just working fine for me. the sound is really great, you can put 3000 songs at CD quality and the battery life must be 9-10 hours (a bit less than the 11 hours announced). On the other hand, it's true that the firewire connection is bugged: i had to reset maybe 10 time the player to transfer 2500 songs but it didn't cause XP to crash. However, it took 3 hours with 1 hour lost in crashes and reseting the player. When you only have a few songs, it's OK but it's annoying when you want to transfer many of them. The USB connection works OK. The software is not so great and intuitive but with a little time you got used to it. The scroll button is really helpful and the files manager is OK.
To sum up, i think it's a pretty decent mp3 player (not as googd as the iPod but among the best for PC). The good points are really the sound quality, the battery life and the 20 GB (actually, it's closer to 19 GB). Except the firewire connection, no bad points even though some features could have been added or done better way.
Rating: 
Summary: What??? No random/repeat play?
Review: ...My [inexpensive]CD player has random/repeat play, this $[money] gadget does not????
Rating:
Summary: Creative got it right
Review: Don't listen to the few totally negative reviews regarding the NJB3. While it does have it's minor quirks, the player works as advertised. What are those quirks? From what I can tell, they are firmware related and will get ironed out once Creative releases the latest version. First, if you charge your batteries completely, the unit may not power up afterwards. That's easily solved by removing/replacing the batteries. Annoying yes, but should be solved with a firmware update. Second, no independent tone controls. You have several presets to choose from, but no real bass/treble adjustments. Again, a possible update should solve that. Third, and this should come to no surprise to anyone, the supplied headphones [stink]! Those quirks and the lousy headphones earn a one star reduction. Battery life is awesome, but not 11 hours as Creative states. But 8-9 is pretty darn good. I'm one of the lucky few to have received a 2nd battery. Which means I can go 16-18 hours before recharging. Transferring songs is a breeze using the firewire interface. If you want a good player that does live up to the hype, then the NJB3 is for you.
Rating: 
Summary: crashes
Review: Works great when it does not crash. Have to reset too many times. Downloads a song in 3 seconds.
Rating: 
Summary: Another dysfunctional Creative product
Review: Lots of problems /deficiencies mainly that the firewire does not work reliably and no USB2 alternative. Creative support has been utterly useless. Even though using creative audigy they suggest that I buy a different firewire card or turn off USB since "it is known to conflict with firewire". Lots of people are reporting same issue. Mine is being returned. -No digital audio out
-Inadequate volume whether using supplied [low quaility] headphones or Sennheisers.
-Slow, slow, slow. Takes ~20 minutes to boot from total power out w/ just 3100 mp's
-Playlist only displays 20 chars of title. So with a lot of band names you won't be able to read any of the song titles to select what you want to play.
-One EAX effect at a time. IMO it sounds best with advanced eq on meaning you can't have smart volume management on. The latest firmware claims to address problems with this but I have seen little evidence. It does appear you can have EQ on and enable SVM from playcenter (not from player menu's). The EQ is definitely on but I have seen no evidence SVM is working.
-The use of a proprietary disk format such that it is not recognized as a drive in Windows. The filemanager and playcenter simply [are bad] IMO.
-Inclusion of a USB 1 connection rather than one compatible with 1 & 2. Firewire is included but the implementation is VERY buggy and failed at least 10 times during the transfer of 3100 MP3's. That included blue screening XP once with the included playcenter/driver version. The latest does not crash XP but the failures still occur. When they do XP has to be rebooted for it to ever work again AND it totally locks up the player requiring total power off(battery removal). When it does that it must rebuild the file list again which as mentioned above is VERY... slow. Get used to the "device not connected or busy message".
-It rejected as invalid mp3's, during the transfer, about 20 even though several other players including winamp and win media player have no problem with them. The real problem is the idiotic dialog box that comes up making an unattended transfer impossible
-Overall the menu system is absolutely horrible IMO.
-Playback is pretty good but I've noticed some strange behavior like sometimes just jumping to the next song before the current has finished. Along with that some other weird behavior like a song repetitively skipping like a CD does when dirty, or noises during playback not in the MP3.
-You don't get 20 gigs of music storage as advertised. It's really 19056mb and the number of songs(8000) is a bit exaggerated and misleading. With 3100 MP3's mostly in the 128-160 range, including ~15 full CD's and some 192's & 320's the drive is less than 3 gigs short of full. I have not done the math yet but I suspect it is not really a true 20gb drive(20480) but rather that they do the math like Dell and some other misleading companies where they choose to define 1k as 1000 rather than the correct 1024 bytes. Just a... marketing ploy that I believe Dell started some time ago. That leaves about 1.4gb missing from a "20gb" drive and I doubt formatting or software used it up.
Rating:
Summary: Great product - not perfect
Review: This is a fantastic MP3 player and my third unit. Sound is great and the bundled software is good. I have loaded the interface software on three different platforms and only had trouble with the Compaq Windows ME system interfaced to a Satellite Internet connection. I have yet to find the conflict in this setup, so I am not blaming Creative. This system will lock up when ever the Creative PlayCenter software is started. All other installs are working flawlessly, so I am thinking, I have my own issues with the Compaq system. I went to the Creative web site and downloaded patches for all the platforms used, so I have the most recent drivers installed. The Jukebox 3 form and function is good ' the scroll wheel has a push in function for selecting ' this is straight across form the power button ' if you span your hand across the unit to press the select button on the scroll wheel you will occasionally turn the unit off. Works best if you hold the unit with one hand and scroll select with the other, one handing, so far, is awkward. 20Gb HD is huge ' I have about 40 CDs uploaded so far and barley dented the storage capability. I am also loading digital Photos on this unit, this is a big plus for me. There is a propitiatory battery in this one, keep your rechargeable AAs in the charger. The 11 hours of use per charge has yet to be tested by me. I wish they had replacement batteries available for the second (empty) battery bay. Available SOON I hope. For some reason I have had to use the (straightened out paper clip to access) 'reset button' three times to resurrect this unit from a scrambled brain, this works great and has always rebooted and worked fine right away. What is the most frustrating MISSING feature? No Randomize the playlist function. As a matter of fact everything plays in 'Windows' alphabetical order. Now this might be my inability to discover the 'play in album order' function. I have researched the Randomize Playlist completely. As a matter of fact the Help Screen tells to drag and drop songs on the playlist to change listening order, Huh? Creative Please correct this with an update to the Creative PlayCenter software and Jukebox 3 Firmware. Should be a 5 star Product No randomize feature and the price steel one star don't get me wrong, I am over all pleased with the purchase.
Rating: 
Summary: Quesiton
Review: Whats the battery life on this MP3 PLayer? And does it act as a hardrive like the Archos playeres can?
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