Rating: 
Summary: Money NOT Well Spent--If I could rate it 0 stars, I would!!
Review: ... I decided to try to use the Nomad as an external hard drive (Creative touts the upgradeability of its firmware so as to enable it to recognize different formats)...and it would have served that purpose well, HAD IT WORKED AT ALL!! The device was DOA, and no amount of coaxing, battery changes, resets, and less-than-polite language will produce a display. OK, so I tried Creative's tech support--not even the courtesy of a reply...Quite possibly this is an isolated occurrence, but do you want to gamble hundreds of dollars on this potential paperweight?!?
Rating: 
Summary: Output a little lacking
Review: Everything about this device is wonderful, except that the headphone output is a little weak under some circustances. I find myself turning it up to the max in any sort of environment less than quiet. But I do love the machine.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm in love with this
Review: First of all, I love my Jukebox. This is a very very very cool gadget and whoever said that people will hate you for having one is very right.
Well, I was scared that it would only work for 110 V but I plugged it right into 220 V (using an adapter, of course) and it works fine. Or at least it didn't burst into flames.
I've already downloaded about 1000 songs in MP3 format into my jukebox and I still have more than 10 GB to go. The space seems limitless. The jukebox is sleek and pretty - a little heavier than I imagined it to be, but it's alright. There are many accessories to be bought - check out nomadworld.com - but I'm especially excited about getting the car adapter for charging the jukebox in my car. Using a simple CD player - to - cassette adaptor, you can plug it into the car radio - just think about what fun you can have on long road trips. I could go on for a long time about why I think buying this is money well spent, but I also need to point out my only gripe : the batteries. I charged them for about 20 hours the first time, and after using the jukebox for about half an hour they went down to 60%. Now they're at 55% or so, but no matter what I do, I can't seem to re-charge them to 100%. Update! Recharging them for a couple of hours (instead of all night long as I used to do) does the trick. Now my only gripe is that some of the CDs I rip get transferred with scratches and very annoying sounds. If I ever fix that, I will be happy forever...
I've seen people complaining about not being able to download songs from the jukebox into your computer. NOT TRUE. You just can't download the songs that the jukebox comes with (you can delete them, though, obviously).
This is SUCH a cool toy. I love it. ...
Rating:
Summary: lots of storage, the ability to record, no remote/firewire
Review: First off, this thing is very cool. My original purpose in getting it was twofold: it should be a replacement to my broken Sony home CD player and it should do live recordings. (By the way, never buy Sony CD players. I've had two and both have died within 3-4 years.) Got it only two days ago, but have played with the recording function quite a bit as I am in a band and needed a portable recording solution that was true CD quality (as opposed to MiniDisc) or better. The Nomad gives me this because it can record at DAT quality, 48khz.
What you do to record is essentially this: hook up your mic to the line in and then select "Recording" off the little screen. Now you have a menu with some info and choices to make:
MonitorThru (On/Off), SamplingRate(11.025khz-48khz), InputGain(0-15), and Boost (On/Off). There is a problem if you don't use an amplified microphone. The problem is that there is a nasty whine from the hard drive that gets louder the more you crank up the InputGain setting. So the solution, if your going to use a microphone, is to MAKE SURE you pump the microphone through a pre-amp, mixer, or multi-track recorder. Once the mic is fed through one of these, the signal will be hotter and override any of that crappy disk noise. In my first heavy duty recording session at 48khz for 2+ hours, the Nomad performed admirably and did not crash. The one thing I could say is that the Nomad could use a graphical VU meter so that you can tell if your line level is too high. After a bit of manual tweaking, I was able to get the line level correct, but it would be a whole lot easier with a graphical display of some sort.Here's how you record on the Nomad. From that Recording menu, you select your recording preferences, press 'ARM' to prepare to record, and then the 'Play' button to start the recording. Recordings will be saved as non-lossy .WAV files (nice for creating quality CDs of live performances) into 10 minute increments. Incremental recordings, saved as tracks, are a safety precaution against crashing, something that happens frequently when you have multi-gigabyte files. The Nomad will save the recording to an Album called 'Recording nnn', where n is the next available number starting at 001. The first 10 minutes of the recording will be labeled 'Track 1'. If you go beyond 10 minutes in your recording, each successive track will be named Track 2, Track 3, and on like that. Once I have a recording saved, I use Creative's PlayCenter 2 on the PC (connect it up using USB - where's Firewire when you need it?) to copy the file over to my hard drive to tweak the sound file to my liking in Cool Edit. Make sure you have plenty of room on your PC's hard drive, because 48khz recordings use up a lotta drive space. One thing about the PlayCenter software. I had a conflict with some CD burning software which would hang my PC (a 600mhz Pentium III/320MB) everytime I tried to install the PlayCenter. I was on the phone for two hours with Creative Labs tech who was very good, but couldn't solve my problem. Finally, after reinstalling Win2K, I found the problem to not be a software conflict, but a hardware conflict between the PlayCenter2 software and the PCI slot position of my ATI All-in-Wonder 128 video card. Once I swapped the video card to a different PCI slot, the software installed fine. Yeesh. The PlayCenter's interface is nice. You have two windows that represent the source and destination of where music or data is and where you want to put it. So, you can rip a CD, copy recordings made from the Nomad back to your PC, take existing MP3s OR ANY DATA off your hard drive and throw it on the Nomad.
Notice I said 'ANY DATA.' Because earlier versions of the firmware and PlayCenter2 don't have the ability to copy any data to/from the Nomad, make sure you download the latest firmware and PlayCenter2 versions ... . You can use this thing as a backup drive as
well!! You can also control all aspects of the Nomad, from deleting songs, to creating playlists, and labeling and organizing your music from this interface. One of the best things about the PlayCenter is that it has a link out to CDDB, the music database. When you rip a CD (at any quality level you want, from 20kbps all the way up to 320kbps), all the track information is automatically downloaded and the music is categorized for you. One warning: you have to have a speedy CPU, memory, and CDROM in order to avoid skipping or other artifacts when you rip songs. I'd say you'd have to have at least a 300mhz Pentium II pc, 128MB RAM and a 24x speed burner. My box is a 200mhz Pentium with 64MB RAM and a 20x reader and I got artifacts when I burnt a Vivaldi CD at 320kbps. Another great thing about the software is that it allows you to rip to both to the Nomad and a directory on your PCs hard drive at the same time for backup purposes. I don't have that much space on my PC, so I choose not to make the backup. Finally, the sound quality varies according to the encoding rate. Music recorded well and encoded well sounds great, but do yourself a favor and getter a better set of headphones than the ones included. I have an older pair of Sony MDR-V600's and they sound much better than the Creative headphones. In the final analysis, time will tell if this thing is actually going to hold up under many recordings. I pray that Creative has some extra hard drives lying around in case this bad boy crashes!! I have yet to figure out the best means of backing this thing up, but I'd imagine it'd be a good idea to have a 20GB drive lying around. Enhancements Creative could make are plenty: Creative needs to get a remote control for this thing as it will be hooked up to my main stereo. Also, Creative should include a digital out for people who want to use this as their main sound source for both home and traveling. Digital out would give us music lovers better audio quality. A line level meter would be appreciated for recordings. Finally, make the data transport mechanism Firewire for quick uploads/downloading of data. All-in-all, this is a nifty little device. I'd really give this guy a 4.5. Let's hope it holds up under repeated use!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointment
Review: For me, it's all about the sound quality. I have an MP3 CD player, and am very happy with it, but I wanted to try something with a little more storage. And don't get me wrong, this is a great piece of equipment in every regard but one: sound quality. I was shocked at how bad it was. It has almost no bass, and when you turn it up it immediately distorts badly. Over half of the EQ presets were unuseable due to high distortion, crackling, and so on. Turning up the volume past about three-fourths produced distortion on almost every EQ setting. I returned it to the store and went back to my excellent sounding MP3 CD player within a week.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: For me, it's all about the sound quality. I have an MP3 CD player, and am very happy with it, but I wanted to try something with a little more storage. And don't get me wrong, this is a great piece of equipment in every regard but one: sound quality. I was shocked at how bad it was. It has almost no bass, and when you turn it up it immediately distorts badly. Over half of the EQ presets were unuseable due to high distortion, crackling, and so on. Turning up the volume past about three-fourths produced distortion on almost every EQ setting. I returned it to the store and went back to my excellent sounding MP3 CD player within a week.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Product
Review: I got this item about 2 weeks ago and haven't been able to keep my hands off of it since. No more CD wallets to drag around and the sound quality is better than I had expected. It sounds best, in my opinion, through the headphone but sounds great through my home stereo system. The CD player in my stereo has been broken for some time so I figured that this would get me by until I got a new stereo...this has become my replacement now. I've only gotten about 590 songs loaded into it but I have much room to spare. All in all, a superior product! I had a Rio 800 which was a HUGE disappointment....the first one I bought wouldn't work at all and the replacement only worked about half the time. A huge disappointment for $...1 1/2 hours MAX of battery use (even though the company claims longer I believe), and only 4 hours of music storage (again, another false claim. Oh sure, you can get 4 hours of music but only at a poor quality). For only $... more, you can get the Nomad Jukebox. Totally worth the money. Do yourselves a favor...if you are looking to buy a portable mp3 player, just go ahead and get the Creative Nomad Jukebox (20gb memory) don't bother with the other ones. Even if you have to put it off for a while due to the price...just keep putting your pennies away until you can get it.
I HIGHLY recommend this product!
Rating:
Summary: Some Additional Thoughts...
Review: I have read all the customer reviews and pretty much agree with
them all (both good and bad). To add to the mix: 1) Creative is playing the BF (before formatted) game.
The 20 GIG drive actually is only 19.064 GIG or about 95% of stated capacity.
(As an example, my 60 GiG PC drive formats to 58.6 .) 2) While the Nomad is portable, it really works best connected
to a system.
I have mine connected to the "CAMBRIDGE MODEL 88 AM and FM Stereo Table Radio".
It is cheaper than the BOSE and has 2 external inputs.
I have the Nomad connected to one and a RioVolt SP-250 CD/MP3 disc player connected to the other.
The flat, buttonless top of the radio, allows for perfect placement of the two players. 3) I use my PC for burning and storing MP3 files.
For this purpose I chose Nero Software and a Western Digital 60GiG External Firewire Drive.
I then transfer selected files over to the Nomad (FireWire > USB via PC).
This solves the backup problem and allows me to delete whatever I want from the Nomad,
knowing that the originals are safe elsewhere (on the PC Drive). All in all, it's a good beginning and I look forward to Creative
updating the Firmware and hardware attachments (remote control for one).
Rating:
Summary: Some Additional Thoughts...
Review: I have read all the customer reviews and pretty much agree with
them all (both good and bad). To add to the mix: 1) Creative is playing the BF (before formatted) game.
The 20 GIG drive actually is only 19.064 GIG or about 95% of stated capacity.
(As an example, my 60 GiG PC drive formats to 58.6 .) 2) While the Nomad is portable, it really works best connected
to a system.
I have mine connected to the "CAMBRIDGE MODEL 88 AM and FM Stereo Table Radio".
It is cheaper than the BOSE and has 2 external inputs.
I have the Nomad connected to one and a RioVolt SP-250 CD/MP3 disc player connected to the other.
The flat, buttonless top of the radio, allows for perfect placement of the two players. 3) I use my PC for burning and storing MP3 files.
For this purpose I chose Nero Software and a Western Digital 60GiG External Firewire Drive.
I then transfer selected files over to the Nomad (FireWire > USB via PC).
This solves the backup problem and allows me to delete whatever I want from the Nomad,
knowing that the originals are safe elsewhere (on the PC Drive). All in all, it's a good beginning and I look forward to Creative
updating the Firmware and hardware attachments (remote control for one).
Rating: 
Summary: WARNING: Write-only memory for MP3 files
Review: I like the unit BUT: you cannot transfer MP3 files from this unit to a computer. Why? Ask them. Obviously, it's perfectly okay to transfer MP3 files -- that's how you get them onto the Nomad -- but it will NOT transfer the MP3 files back out. This was a real bummer: I had a lot of MP3 files on my work computer that I wanted to bring home. I put them on the Nomad, brought it home, and then discovered, in the fine print, that it will not transfer MP3 files to the computer. Rotten.
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