Rating: 
Summary: Needs product inprovement but getting better #3
Review: I purchased the unit for my wife ... so she could enjoy her CD collection on the road. Sadly the aformentioned battery life, lack of a true "automobile" solution and cumbersome operating interface has reduced the gift to an expensive paperweight. The complexity is to much for her.
The (once)promissed remote, 12 volt adapter and a more sophisticated "battery" sollution would make this a "contender" for those that require a "walkman" type of solution.I am a bit more of a hacker and may find a use for it, but it is not a product for the faint of heart at this time.
I do like the company and the "idea" of the product, I wish it would get better "faster". I would even buy another if it was improved.
Update:
I have taken it under my wing and (being the nerd I am) am having fun with it. I have ordered the "playdock" ... and, I think, it will meet a need for a small AC/DC home (live on a boat) system. The new software (Sep 2001) and firmware appears to be well improved (the batteries are charging better than before). I never did come up with a good way to use it in the auto, other reviewer's have also made note of this. It will be a "AC/DC Jukebox" on a boat for now and I raised my rating from two to three as I think it will do this task well.Update with the play dock: Up to 4 stars.. works great, a great desktop jukebox (as if
I have ever seen a desktop jukebox before)and even ac/dc. I
noticed the Creative site has a FAQ on auto use, but as others
have wrote it still needs a remote or better interface
to use in the auto. My wife now uses it in the "dock". We
will likely buy a 20GB'er this comming year. A boat owners dream!!
Rating:
Summary: The best MP3 player available...but...
Review: At a hefty cost, this player can't be beaten. The battery drain is heavy though...but other than that...a perfect piece.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm melting (what a world)
Review: I was so excited when I bought this, thinking about how many songs I could put in and listen. I enjoyed it for about a month. However, after a night of charging the batteries, they faded after one song. No problem, I had a backup set, or so I thought. I had never used them so I plugged them in to charge up overnight. My dogs woke me up about three in the morning, barking at my desk which was smoldering. I quickly uplugged the jukebox. I checked the batteries, and they were in correctly (I have photos). I beg you, DO NOT PURCHASE THIS ITEM.
Rating:
Summary: Steve from Los Angeles
Review: I purchased one of these in October from Amazon. By February it had quit working. (I only used it at home and did not subject it to any unusual wear.) I mailed it to Creative Labs for repair and they said it could not be repaired and was out of the 90 day warranty. So now I have wasted $. I would be very careful about purchasing a device this expensive that is unreliable and has such a short warranty.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Product
Review: Offers portability and the output of the speakers is very good when connected to a good speaker system.
Rating:
Summary: A good product with some room for improvement.
Review: I bought this play with high hopes and most of them are met. The unit plays well. The battery life is a little weak, but Creative Labs is very thoughtful and includes a second set of batteries. It recharges fast enough and I usually listen when it's plugged in anyhow. Be carefull of using regular batteries, they will be drained within 2 hours! On the good side, this does as expected, plays many hours of music, sounds great and is easy to navigate. The down side is: I would like to see bettter support through the webstie from Creative Labs. This is a costly item, it would be great to have Web chat or something to get simple answers The software is not the best. When I try to rip Mp3's from a CD the first track is always messed up. I have to rip the first track from the CD to the hard drive and then trasfer to the CD. This is annoying because I am trying to save space on my hard drive. .wma files are supposed to offer better sound quality at lower kb rates, so therefore smaller files so more can be stored on the Jukebox. But, I can't seem to get the same quality when ripping from CD to .wma with the Play Center software included. I get better .wma sound using Windows Media Player, but again that goes to the hard drive then to the Jukebox. i also can't figure out how to trasnfer from the Jukebox to a PC. The Jukebox comes with a couple audio books that I would like to put onto PC and make room on the Nomad for more music. Overall the next version of the Jukebox should be great. It needs a bigger drive, maybe 20 gig. It also could use a tuner for FM signals to make it more of a complete product. I would also love to see a digital out to plug into a good quality stereo. I would say people should hold off buying until the next gen of players are on the market. But, if you want something that holds 150 CD's now (600 if I could figure out how to get the higher quality .wma files on it), it's as good as it gets. p.s. Be ready to buy some headphones. The included ones are not very good.
Rating:
Summary: Lousy customer support
Review: I bought a Jukebox in September and spent some time loading all my music on it. The first time I tried to use in without AC power the batteries lasted about 15 seconds. Creative said it was a battery problem and sent me new batteries, but that did not solve the problem. When I asked for more help, they informed me that the product only had a 90 day warranty and that there was nothing they could do for me. Unbelievably bad customer support. I will by nothing from Creative Labs ever again!
Rating: 
Summary: User Interface and Mac Software Issues
Review: First of all, even with my issues, I highly recommend this product, especially for those who travel a lot. One feature that will protect you and that I've used is the software update capability. Should give you some future protection. The issues that got to me are: 1) Long start-up time... really only an issue in the car. It takes almost a minute to start-up... about the same time as my Mac! Consumer devices should be instant-on. 2) User interface - It takes a lot of steps to do simple things. They should have a "quick list" with 2-steps to getting your top or last 5 played. 3) My SoundPlayer software on the Mac had problems. A few times songs I'd rip would play fine on the Mac, but would give me a "Internal Write Error" when I tried to transfer to the NJB. Then the NJB would wipe out it's titles until reset. I use Apple's iTunes and it seems to work just fine. Again, the fact that you can upgrade the software should protect you in the future, (except the instant-on feature which would require more flash and burning the core "OS" into it).
Rating:
Summary: Please Click Add 2 Cart NOW!
Review: I just recieved this as a birthday gift a couple of weeks ago. It is defenitely worth every penny! Most complaints made by other reviewers can be fixed by the simple firmware upgrade or are problems that can be fixed otherwise. For example, when I was using WMA files, the player would lock up (freeze) after playing the 1st song on a playlist. It turned out that it was the program I was using to encode the files that was the problem. After downloading a new encoding program, and using that to encode files, the problem was fixed. I can say that the battery life is kind of low, but it's just fine for my use and the batteries charge while you use the player with the adapter or any time it is plugged in. The backlight is awesome, the case is okay, and the headphones are cheap, but not ridiculous. I would give the player a 4.999999 star rating if possible, (because of battery life) but I give it 5 stars because of the fact that I can have thousands of CD-Quality songs (96kbit WMA) in the palm of my hand! If you are debating between this and a cheaper player, this is definitely the one to buy! Excellent product!
Rating:
Summary: Pointing to the future of MP3
Review: While I am still skeptical about the MP3 format from an audiophile standpoint, Nomad has sold me on convenience. I have never understood why someone would sacrifice so much sound quality in order to use a Rio (for ex) when a MiniDisc would serve the same purpose, with better sound and the ability to swap inexpensive discs. The Nomad, on the other hand, shows just how cool MP3 can be. I've filled up the hard drive with about 1000 tracks at 160 kbs (I find that 128 is just too tinny sounding)and now I run it endlessly on random. I've basically created my own radio station. So, the pros: 1. It holds an amazing amount of music, even at a higher bitrate than normal. 2. Considering that fact, it's quite small. About the same as the first generation of portable CD players. 3. The controls are relatively easy to navigate with. 4. It seems rugged and well-built. The cons: 1. It is small -- for a major music archive -- but it's heavy and bulky for, say, running or skiing. 2. Start-up time is very very slow. 3. Software on the unit is clumsy, simplistic and slow. 4. Creative Play Center 2 is perhaps the worst ripping and file organizing software I've ever seen. The software for both PC and Nomad are utterly unintuitive. I would like to see some sort of playlist update function that allows me to tweak my playlists and harddrive contents without having to sweep everything clean or do it piecemeal. This point will become clearer to you after you've used it. 5. It's a battery hog. 6. Earphones suck and don't fit me so well. You might be different. Summary: a good Version One. I am looking forward to the final draft. Tips: You can do a lot of file maintenance for you Nomad via other software, such as MusicMatch or RealJukebox. Don't toss those programs away. On that note, use those programs to rename tracks with duplicate titles. Nomad is not too bright about telling the difference between Irma Thomas and the Stones doing Time is On My Side, and PlayCenter is a terrible file management system. So get all your file names and titles cleaned up in a good program and then dump them all over to PlayCenter to make your playlists. And also, turn off the EQ settings ("EAX") when you're using an external amplifier (computer, car, etc) to save battery life.
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