Rating: 
Summary: Great Sound, Great Product
Review: I wasn't sure about buying the Nomad Jukebox 3 because of the mixed reviews but now that I got mine and loaded it with around 4,500 songs I can say that it's a fine piece of hardware (the bundled software is useless, get Notmad instead). The sound is great and the 2 line outs are definitely the selling point over the Jukebox Zen, It's great to be able to connect the player to your home stereo or multimedia speakers. The Optical Line In is also a plus, specially if you own a lot of tapes and want to rip'em or just want to record voice anything through a microphone.
It's important to get the latest firmware and drivers so that you don't encounter the problems others have.Pros:
- Great sound
- 2 Line Outs
- Optical Line In
- 20 GB Cons:
- No USB 2.0
- Lousy bundled software Other:
- It HAS random play (shuffle)
- I've dropped my player twice and It's still working, so far so good..
Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Review: Excellent Product. Sound Quality: better than expected
Easy to use: Programming the Play List is a real challenge.
Size: Not bad, but could be smaller
Software: Just Great. Firmware update is available at creative.com in case if you have the old one
Sound controls: Excellent
Glidges: will not turn on after charging the battery overnight. You have to remove the battery and put it again to make it work. Just download the new software (free at creative.com) and the problem goes away. Manual: Useless.
Display: Very logic and easy to read
Song download time: Really fast with the 1394.
Bottom line: Fantastic product. I have thousands of sounds in my machine and there's still room for more. Great buy.
Thanks creative labs!!!
Rating:
Summary: Stop searching
Review: Stop searching and I mean it. Believe me when I say that because I've already done the searching for you. For nearly a month before making a final decision on a Jukebox, I researched every brand and model out there and narrowed it down to this one. Five months later, I couldnt be more happy with that decision. Its my favorite toy and I recommend it to all my friends. I am in the military and because of the high op tempo, deploy often. It goes absolutely everywhere with me, and beats the bulky CD booklets I used to carry. Its durable, and since downloading the update, havent had a single issue with it yet. All those complaints about the software and system crashing are simple fixes if you just read the manual and follow update instructions. Ive gotten around 9 hours of play per charge, and the sound quality is excellent. The only problem is that I can't run with it, but for you military guys...if you pad it and put it in your ruck, it works fine. So stop looking and get this jukebox. It will become your favorite toy also.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread
Review: Okay, maybe that's a little much, but I've had the Nomad for almost three months and LOVE IT! I'm a huge music fan who loves to take tunes everywhere. I've loaded 5,500 songs (500 more than the manual claims) in 128 bit rate into the player. To give you an idea of how many songs that is, it would take almost two weeks to play all the songs before repeating! Imagine. Your entire music collection in the palm of your hand. No more CD's strewn all over the frontseat of your car. Plus, if you use the "random" function, it's like having your own radio station of your favorite songs. Transferring files is easy with the Playcenter software. Just insert an audio CD. It recognizes it and fills in all the artist and title information for you. It also converts CDs to MP3's and sends them to the player in one easy step. The Playcenter software allows you to copy it to a floppy and take it with you. So, you can go to a buddy's house, install the software, plug your jukebox into his computer and share any files you have or copy some of his to your player. The player allows you to organize songs by album, artist, title, and genre. The real fun is creating playlists (I've created many, like driving tunes and songs for a rainy day). For those looking for more flexibility, this player will accept wave files, and can store other file types, like movies and pictures. It can also record just like a tape deck. Some of the bells and whistles are a little silly, especially the EAX effects. But, if you want to know what your favorite band would sound like playing in your bathtub, those effects are there. The only one that's crucial is the "smart volume" which evens out the level of all your MP3's. Beware though, those extra effects drain the battery quicker. So, I recommend buying a second battery for longer listenings between chargings. The only problem I've had with the player is with the scroll wheel. Sometimes it's a little erratic, scrolling up when I want to scroll down. Also, you cannot jog with this player (constant jarring will scratch the hard drive). Hopefully, that's an innovation that's coming soon. Other than that, I couldn't be happier. This player has helped cut down on the wear and tear of my CD's and rendered radio obsolete. With over 5,000 songs going wherever I go, I've always got good music.
Rating: 
Summary: solid performer
Review: I had the original Jukebox (30GB), sold it, bought this Jukebox3 almost a year ago and have been very pleased since then. Without question, the biggest complaint is the firmware as editing/organizing tracks can be time consuming and confusing. And scrolling through 20GB of tracks could be easier, but these are relatively minor complaints in my eyes. I use it mostly in my car, and the sound is excellent. When I travel with it, I've been using small earbud headphones, which work fine, but I may consider those noise cancelling headphones I've read about. You won't be able to jog with this unit, but walking around town, I haven't found it to skip at all. If you're looking for something to use at the gym, I'd suggest the Samsung Yepp. If you purchase this unit, I'd strongly suggest you buy an optional second battery and the wired FM remote. Nomad claims with 2 batteries you can use it for 22 hours. I've never used it that long without charging it, but I can say 15 hours isn't a problem. I use USB 2.0 for transferring, and believe me, having used both USB 2.0 and USB 1.1, you'll want to spend the [money] on a USB 2.0 card if you don't already have that capability. I'm sure future models will only get better, but in the meantime, this is a great unit that will store songs without clogging up your hard drive, and it offers excellent portability for a car or travel.
Rating: 
Summary: Only so-so, I would look at alternatives
Review: I bought this instead of the iPod because it was so much cheaper. Unfortunately I wonder if I got what I paid for. The user interface is clumsy, especially while driving, which is my primary use. The unit occasionally locks up and must be reset, even though I stay current with firmware and driver upgrades. The size and shape is awkward, and I don't care for the design. However, it does work, and I have packed it full of about 150 CDs recorded at 192k. With my [$$$] ears compressed audio is fine for the car, but it still doesn't cut it for home listening.
Rating:
Summary: A huge step for Creative kind
Review: I am a DJ, music lover who will not be caught dead without music somewhere on my person. I bought the Jukebox over the Ipod for many reasons. The Jukebox can record. I plug my jukebox into a friends portable CD player and record the CD, in 192 mp3 or a number of other quality choises. I can listed to it right there or wait till I take it home where the software finds the album on CDDB and names the album and tracks. I use the MP3 player as a recording device to replace my DAT machine at Gigs. I can plug a pre amp mic into the Jukebox and record my voice. I can slow down my music in the juke box with time scaling. I can replace the hard drive if need be in the future. I can use it as a portable hard drive when I need to save an essay (floppy? nah!) I can plug it into a four speaker sound system with the front and rear channels seperated, Quadrophonnic sound!! I get 22 hours of battery because they give you two battery slots built in. The software gets updated all the time on their site. I have learned to really trust creative products and would not hesitate to recommend this product to the serious music lover. Less serious music lovers should look to the Zen another great product with a few less features in a compact body. I would recommend buying one of those portable to Tapedeck converters so you can plug into boom boxes where ever you go.
Rating: 
Summary: OK, but not ripe.
Review: Well, it plays, and transfers files. But why on earth could it not also be a USB hard drive? I don't really mind the clumsy file transfer mechanism, but it appears you can't store a folder tree in there, only individual files all in the same folder, what's the use in that? And why is the FM wired remote out of stock for the past half a year, at least (sold on eBay for twice the retail price)?
It would also be only reasonable that you could store *songs* in folders as well, and navigate by folder *as well as* by ID tags.
So an OK player, did not die on me yet, but needs work.
Rating:
Summary: Nice player
Review: This is a great MP3 player. I'm ecstatic about it. Only reason why it didn't get 5 stars is because Firewire is flaky, but since I don't copy and remove songs from the player like crazy, USB works good enough for me. A must buy for anyone who has a lot of MP3s and wants one player to hold them all.
Rating:
Summary: An Incredibly Awesome MP3 Player
Review: I bought this player two weeks ago, and thanks to Amazon, got a fabulous discount, and it arrived two days after I ordered it. I could not wait to try it out. I read so many reviews about the product on cnet, zdnet, amazon, and consumer reports and decided that the negative reviews stemmed mostly from persons who either got a bum player or just could not figure out how to use it. The itself player is fabulous! I had no trouble figuring out how it works, I went throught the interactive tutorial and I was actually ripping cds and transferring music to the player after only two hours of having the product. My only beef is with the software, it kept crashing! This is not the fault of the software, but the fault of my computer, turns out I did not have enough memory to run it. But, once I cured that problem and got the new firmware and downloads from nomadworld.com, the software proved to be pretty decent to help me rip cds, and transfer music to my player, as well as create playlist and arrange the order of my songs and albums. I would recommend that if buying the player you do go to nomadworld.com to get the latest firmware and downloads, otherwise, you will have a hard time using and navigating the software. I had such a hard time with the software, but once I downloaded the necessary updates, the gliches were all ironed out. If the player itself ever freezes, then there is a reset button, which if you ever have to use it, does not cause you to lose any of your songs. It holds 5,000 MP3s or 8,000 songs in WMA format--I don't even own that many songs! It even holds data files. Every song from every cd that I own (quite a lot) is on this player and I still have room left for thousands more. If you download music from the net, the software allows you to transfer all of the songs from that program, or any other program, including Windows Media Player directly onto the player. You can even create your own PC Music Library from all of the songs on your player, and play the songs on your computer. I just couldn't believe the Jukebox 3 could hold so much music, and be so easy to navigate, yet costs so little. There is no way in the world I would pay $...for an iPod, this player is just as good and from the review at consumer reports, its better! You simply cannot ignore an MP3 player at this price, with this much space, ease of use, and convenience. The player itself is fabulous to carry around with me, wherever I go. Yes, its bigger than the iPod, but bulky, certainly not. I just put in the earphones, and slip it in my carryall, and I'm good to go. I carry it everywhere. I did have to get new headphones, the ones that came with it just were not my style. But, the sound on the player is incredible! You have so many different options for sound formatting, creating playlists, arranging tracks, etc. You can search on the player by artist, album, track, however you want. Enter the list of songs you want in the "Play Now" menu, and it plays these songs for you. If you select to play a particular artist, it will play all the songs from that artist, or if you select a particular playlist, it will play all the songs from that playlist and you can use the software to rearrange the tracks. It came with firewire and USB cables, I immediately went out and bought a firewire adapter for my notebook computer and found that the difference between the firewire and the USB is only a few seconds, but, in the long run, if you want to transfer more than a dozen songs at once, firewire is the way to go.
Yes, I've already dropped it--and guess what, it didn't matter, it kept working. It has an automatic idle shutoff which is great for preserving battery power (about 11 hours on one battery) the battery life is great, and you can even add a second battery to extend the battery life. It takes a relatively short time to charge, if you come home at night and all the battery power is drained, simply plug it in and when you wake up in the morning, it will be good to go. You can still listen to music while its charging, you can attach speakers to the player, which I have done, and listen to music that way, or buy a car kit, which I also did, and listen to it while driving around. This player gives me so many choices for its use that there is no way I could have ever chosen another player. I love it!
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