Rating: 
Summary: A very good Jukebox...but not perfect
Review: I only bought this jukebox a few days ago on October 13, 2002. At first, I was very excited to have this jukebox. I was so excited I didn't read the manual or directions. Unfortunately, I charged the batteries the wrong way and only gave it a 5 minute capacity. Luckily, I got it replaced and charged the batteries correctly. I am trying to stress the point: "Read the directions carefully!!" It says to charge it 12 hours straight with no interruption. Listen to this!! Its important to follow. Just put the batteries in and plug it into the AC power adapter. There will be no icon indicating that its charging, but it is. Remeber, 12 hours, do not exceed charging it for more than 15 hours. You dont want yours to mess up like mine. Dont be surprised if you charge it right and the battery drops quickly. Once you turn it off and on again, it will bounce back.Also, if you are a lazy person and have no common sense, dont bother with this product. Being able to navigate through the Creative PlayCenter 2 (Nomad Transfer Software) is quite hard and people who are a bit lazy (no offense) will find it hard. I had no problem at all and I dont see why other people keep saying bad comments about the software. Its fine with me. The volume?? Hahahaha! People also complain about the low volume with the headphones it came with. I am very very surprised. The headphones are very loud at max volume: (20). Its actually louder than my Sony Discman I had previously. I can hear it very clearly on the bus. If your a person who would like to use it when you travel or on a bus, then this is the perfect item for you....and you may not even need another music product after this one.... But if you read my review and follow the directions I said, then you should be fine!
Rating: 
Summary: Poor software, broke quickly
Review: I found the ripping software needlessly confusing and with poor instructions. Still, we put a dozen CDs on it and used it for a few hours. We forgot about it for a few months. Today I went to add more CDs and, after the first two additions, the unit stopped working. ... I am disappointed and would not buy from this company again.
Rating: 
Summary: tried and tested
Review: When purchasing the Nomad a year ago there was little competition, and unbelievably this still holds true. I took my nomad on the road for a year through south america and its still going strong, plus i had access to hundreds of my cds and downloaded tunes, all in the space of a slighly large cd player.
all this should be testimony alone.
In fairness there are a couple of flaws but the pluses far outweigh them, yes the headphones provided are large and pretty useless, i instantly replaced them and that sorted out that problem, plus i like to have the nomad its driver software and headphones all in its leather case for transport ease.
the battery life is short, and when running on disposables almost laughable, but plus it in and recharge the rechargeables and all is well.
i did have a couple of crashes when making extremely large random playlists but very rarely.
the pluses are huge, i do have an enormous cd collection so 10 gb wasnt quite enough the 20 gb would have been ideal, but in a year i never got bored of the choice i had, compare this to travelling with a stack of 20 or 30 cds and a player and the appeal is obvious.
i have found the sofware works well with macs and pcs, and in fact carry the cd around incase i need to download extra music from the web.
the machine itself is very robust, in a year of backpacking through latin america it survived entirely intact.
i have recently been looking for the best mp3 player for a friend and we have come to the conclusion that its still the best around.
Rating: 
Summary: Runs hot, but not for long -- I don't recommend Creative
Review: I have the 6 GB version which looks the same on the outside just has a 6 GB (laptop hard drive) instead of the 10 GB drive. It came with two sets of 4 AA NiCad rechargeable batteries...good. But the thing only runs less than an hour before needing recharge. Audio output is not very strong. I used full volume with the supplied headphones most of the time. I think most of that battery power is lost in heat as this unit gets quite warm. I didn't use mine too much. But when I did use it all day one day while plugged into AC power, it burned up. It was just out of warranty. I sent an email to Creative Labs asking for help but got no response. So I opened up the unit and found one circuit board component burned to a crisp! Lucky it didn't catch fire and burn down my house. It got so hot it melted one of the buttons which caved into the case. I did recover the scorched Fujitsu hard drive from the unit and put it in a laptop computer...the hard drive still works fine!
Rating:
Summary: There a lot of better options out there
Review: I have used this for less than a year and I think I threw my money away. Batteries last 45 minutes tops right now. It has locked on me countless times, so while driving, I have to manage to remove the batteries, place them again and wait for the library to show up (this can take as long as 3 minutes!). File transfer is slow (no surprise, its USB) and lately I have been transferring 200 songs only to have it display 32, and there is nothing wrong with these songs. I am very dissatisfied with this product, hopefully this review will help someone in not buying this overpriced worthless mp3 player from here.
Rating:
Summary: A good product with a couple things on the down side
Review: I have a 6GB version of Nomad, and I am overall satisfied with its quality and performance. I do not regret the purchase. The sound quality is just fine, and I am rather picky on sounds. I couldn't even stand the reduced quality of MP3 sound compared to CD's when it first came out, but the convenience of having so many songs all packed in and ready to play any time made me a convert already. And Nomad is really a good portable MP3 player. It has a good equalizer and a few other fancy additions like effects and playing speed adjustment, so you can adjust sounds to your own liking to a good extent. I also wanted to make use of Nomad's recording capability, but I haven't been able to since I need a decent microphone. This isn't a good device to do a casual recording, like you can with a Walkman. A couple things that I think can be improved are the battery life, the start up time, and the navigation. Before updating to the latest Asian version of firmware, it only lasted only about three hours. To my surprise, after updating it got up to about four hours. The start up time is about 40 seconds, which is kind of annoying when you just want music real quick on a short trip to bathroom :P. The navigation is kind of awkward, slow when you are playing at the same time. I just hope the search capability is improved so that I don't always have to start out from scrach, the first letter. I think 10GB would be perfect, while 20GB is an overkill. If you have lots of songs, 6GB is quickly filled up unless you go for recording at lower bit rate.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Player
Review: I received this player as a present and was very impressed with the sound quality and ease of use. I was not in the market for an mp3 player when I got it and had no idea of the sound quality you could achieve with it. It has a massive amount of memory on it and it works great with the software provided as well as Musicmatch Jukebox. The only reason I give this a four star rating (it really should be four and a half) is because of the battery problems I have encountered, it won't recharge the batteries it came with. I recently gave up on the batteries and just use it plugged in with a car adapter or the home charging jack. I use it with a tape adapter in the car and it rocks. Overall, a great buy and well worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: The best mp3 player!
Review: I've had the creative nomad jukebox for about 3-4 months now and all that I can say is that it totally rocks! I've always been into electronics so when my old cd walkman gave out, I looked into buying an mp3 player. Now I searched up a ton of mp3 players and this one, by far, is the BEST. With 10GB of storage capacity, you can store so much on here. You can customize playlists for every possible occasion and you also have many other options of not only adjusting the bass/treble but it also can play your songs for you in various different settings that they provide - auditorium, concert, living room, etc. It is so amazing because you can download mp3's and then play them as you would hear it in a concert setting. It's so brilliant. The software is easy to use. You can make mp3's from your own cd's and then download them to your jukebox or you can just download songs from the internet and then download them to your jukebox. I have heard complaints that the volume [is not good]. That is simply not true. The volume is clear and it has excellent sound quality. Another thing i was worried about was the weight of the jukebox because I love working out with music and I wanted to take it with me wherever I went. Although it is heavier than other mp3 players, it's still about the size of a cd-man and the weight is not that significant. I run with my jukebox and I don't have any problems. Oh, and that's another thing. It DOESN'T SKIP. For someone who runs, that's really important and there is no cd-man that doesn't skip. It has a 5 minute anti-skip. 5 MINUTES! That's amazing. Basically, you will have no problems. I take it with me everywhere...and I even play it in my car. Overall, i think this player is well worth the money. If you want to buy an outstanding mp3 player, then this is the one for you. The only cons that I can think of are that it's heavy and it doesn't have that long of a battery life. (By the way, I don't use the Creative rechargable batteries that come with the player. I bought some Energizer and Sony ones and they are way better. You can play music for about 5 hours non stop). Overall, I give it a 2 thumbs up!
Rating:
Summary: NICE
Review: Ever since my license got suspended, I've been riding public transportation on a daily basis. I got tired of lugging my giant "portable" CD walkman around so I decided to do some shopping for something a little smaller. MP3 players came to mind, especially since I've already got a handful of strictly MP3 gigs on my PC. 32Mb players run a little over [price]. Extremely small and lightweight, but WTF am I gonna do with 32megs??? Listen to the same 5 songs over and over again? Rewrite a new tracklist every night? Garbage. 64Mb players go for about [price]. See 32Mb description above x 2. 128Mb players can easily creep up to the [price] mark. Still not nearly enough space for my tough-to-please mentality. That's not even 1/4 of a CD's worth. and then it appeared... Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox - under [price]. 10 gigs of music. Wow. 10 gigs?!?! And I'm here shopping around for 128megs?!?! *.WMA, *.WAV, and *.MP3 format with upgradable firmware?! Sold. I finally got my new toy this past Monday and I already LOVE IT. The only thing that [stinks] is that it's the same size as my old CD walkman, which sorta defeats the purpose of why I wanted something new in the first place. Oh well. If you're all up on the whole digital music thing, this item is a MUST HAVE. *Fast transfers via USB ports - each track only takes a few seconds to upload/download. *100% Customizable. Playlists along with tracks categorized by artist, album, and genre. CONS: *Comes loaded with some garbage samples and tracks. Not a big deal though, go ahead and delete 'em. *I had no problem installing the included software on my Win98 SE PC at home, but couldn't do it on my Win2000 box at work. When I launch the Creative PlayCenter 2, it generates errors and shuts down even after reinstalling it. Overall: 9 out of 10.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent sound quality and features! Easy to use.
Review: I know some folks had trouble using this thing, but in my opinion a dunken monkey could hook it up. I have a Mac and a PC; it worked flawlessly with both. On the Mac it even appears in iTunes, so you simply drag files to it. I have owned and used a HipDisk, RAM MP3 players (2), and MP3 CD Players (2). The sound quality on this thing is better than any of them (I am a professional audio engineer and picky). I think the CODEC is simply better (with free firmware updates it'll always improve). There's even a parametric EQ which lets you tailor Bass/Midrange/Treble to your tastes, but it actually sounds good flat. There's 2 line outs and a line in so you can record to the unit. As a musician, I have recorded song ideas, etc. with ease. I have over 1,600 songs in it at 192 kbs, which the flexible and intuitive interface makes easy to pick and choose from. Besides using playlists, you can listen to a certain genre, album or artist. At work I was using my Mac to play MP3s, but that slowed it down a little. Now I just plug the Jukebox into my PC, control it with the onscreen interface and rock out. At the gym with it on random play I have a "radio station" with over 1,600 of my favorite tunes. It's bulkier than the iPod, but has twice the drive space, costs $150.00 less and works with Mac/PC. The new Jukebox III looks even better (with 20 GB and firewire), but they were out of stock and I am leaving to India for a month and needed tunes (I would have had to take a gazillion CDs!). Bottom line: I would buy another in a second! p.s. I have never bothered to review anything except this and TiVo. Two of the greatest inventions ever.
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