Rating: 
Summary: I've had my Nomad Jukebox a year, and absolutely love it!
Review: Although the controls are a little akward and annoying to use at times, this minor drawback is completely outweighed by the other features and overall quality of the Nomad. I have the original 6 gig model, but last I checked, it's upgradable to 60 gigs, since it uses a standard laptop harddrive, which can be changed. I've found 6 gigs to be plenty for when I'm on the go, and use my Nomad primarily in my taxi, where I hook it's line output to the line input on my older Pioneer car stereo. It's truly perfect for 12 hour shifts as a cab driver, and my passengers love it too. The sound is nothing short of awesome if you have good sounding mp3s, since it's sound hardware is basically a SoundBlaster Live. The firmware is upgradable too, so this player can adapt to new file formats as they're introduced in the future.In order to fully appriciate this player, you should already have a sizable mp3 library. Mine was up to about 120 gigs when I bought my Nomad Jukebox last year. Realise, it will take you a while to get 6 gigs of mp3s into it with USB. Once you fill it up though, it's a real pleasure to remove the songs you're tired of and add more new ones. The Playcenter 2 software that ships with the Nomad Jukebox is completely awful; so bad I nearly returned mine shortly after I bought it. There are much better programs for making mp3s which I of course already had. Fortunatly, there is also other software available for the Nomad, so you don't have to use the wreched PlayCenter software at all. I've been using Notmad Explorer from Redchair Software for almost a year with my Nomad, and love it. Notmad (for Windows) integrates into Windows Explorer and makes moving files to and from the Nomad Jukebox via USB as easy as copying them to another harddrive, and gives network support that as far as I could tell was absent in PlayCenter. Notmad Explorer also lets you create and edit your playlists so you don't have to do it with the tiny bottons and screen on the player. It also has the ability to edit the ID3 tags of the files on the Nomad Jukebox, a crucial feature that PlayCenter lacks. The most amazing feature of the Nomad Jukebox, which I rarely see mentioned, is not only is it a player, it's also a recorder, and an exceptional one at that. Using it's analog audio input, It makes recordings that put to shame anything I've EVER heard before. It records to 16-bit wave files at either 44k (CD quality) or 48k (slightly higher DAT quality). I've been using it to digitally record my vinyl and cassettes, and have also made amazing recordings of concerts and band jam sessions with it. The wave files I easily move to a PC with Notmad Explorer to edit and compress into mp3s. I've been making mp3s from analog sources with PCs since 1999, and the quality of the mp3s made from wave files recorded with the Nomad Jukebox are so good it's stunning. I've been collecting records since 1973, so this feature is really a dream come true. Oddly enough, it lacks an input level meter, but the recording level is adjustable, so with a little trial and error you can get it perfect. Another perk is that the Nomad Jukebox runs on 12 volts DC; perfect for using in a car. The included rechargable batteries are only good for about 3 hours, but they're standard AA batteries, so as better battery technology develops, this too can improve. I'm amazed how many people complain about this, as all things considered, three hours of playback is very good. Few laptops will play mp3s this long on thier batteries, and additional batteries for the Nomad are much cheaper than any laptop battery by a long shot. The EAX feature that's so hyped I've found to be a complete waste. Why add cheezy echo delay effects to a player that without them sounds excellent? No, the Nomad Jukebox is not very suitable for active use (jogging, snowboarding, etc), but it's really not intended for that. I have found it to be perfect for bicycle riding around town, as long as the ride is under two hours. I also use it while riding the bus and walking. The supplied carrying case is pretty useless, but since the Nomad Jukebox is roughly the size of a portable CD player, it wasn't hard to find a nice suitable case for it with a strap and room for it's cables. The complaints about CDDB file naming issues really amuse me. It's a user-submitted database, of course it's riddled with errors. Am I the only person left that's not too lazy to type in my own ID3 tags? This is very easy to do with Winamp before uploading the files to the Nomad. One note about ID3 tags: use ID3v1, not ID3v2 if you care about continous play albums, otherwise you'll hear a pause in the music as the Nomad Jukebox changes tracks. This is because ID3v1 uses the mp3 file header, and ID3v2 appends itself to the end of the file, making the mp3 slightly larger, enough to cause a pause. The Nomad Jukebox is the ONLY player I've seen that will not insert a pause between files, but only if there are no ID3v2 tags. Those are easily removed with Winamp as well. I know some people prefer WMA to mp3, but personally I'm not impressed. In short, the Nomad Jukebox is a remarkably good portable audio component if used with third party software and accessories. It's much more than merely an mp3 player, and well worth every penny. Unlike other mp3 devices, it's fully upgradable, and should never really be obselete. I've nearly stopped burning CDs since I got it, since I can hook my Nomad Jukebox up to nearly any stereo or amplified speakers. I've yet to see a better way to take a large amount of music with you. Sure, the iPod is smaller, but it's features don't even compare to the Nomad Jukebox. Once you've made the jump to this harddrive based player, memory based ones seem laughably limited, and carrying CDs with you, even mp3-CDs, seems silly.
Rating: 
Summary: Worked correctly only once
Review: I have had this product for over 4 months. I can safely say that when I received it, it was brand new. I then plugged it in and began enjoying the massive variety of musical genres. I would estimate that it would take several hundred hours to encode all those songs as MP3 files. I found the preload for $200.00 more to be well worth it.
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