Rating: 
Summary: It's all been said before.
Review: I'm just throwing my $0.02 in here. I have been wanting an MP3 player for awhile now. When I went to buy, it was total impulse, money to burn, buy it. I took a chance on the Nomad because of size alone. Don't kid yourself, size is everything. When it comes to MP3 files, most companies out there don't seem to get the fact that anyone interested in MP3's need a LOT of space. This puppy has it. My entire collection is only 4 gigs, and I have a LOT of music.
The sound is a little light. I bought better headphones than the ones included (didn't like the fit of those anyway) and now have a classic over the head set that is fine. Still could be louder, but as it is, people sitting next to me on the train can hear what I am listening to. So it plays fine.
The error handling on the Nomad is a bit weak. It has no way to deal with corrupt files, and sometimes I get a load of new music and don't have time to listen to all the tracks and make sure they are full and complete before I am on my way out the door. So I have had to pull the batteries out just to reboot. It will totally freeze up when it hits a bad file. No way around it but to reboot, and the start up time is a bit on the long side.
The battery life has been mentioned, but since my biggest use is between the house and the office, I just plug it in when I get to either, and it's ready for the ride back.
These are seriously the ONLY complaints I can come up with. I ended up replacing the carry bag with a regular CD Player/CD case with a shoulder strap and enough space to keep the recharge cord with me. It's no havier than a CD player, I don't have to worry about skipping music if I move, and I have my entire music collection on my hip. That makes the good out weight the bad by a long shot. I am a very happy customer.
Rating: 
Summary: Good idea but not yet ready for prime time
Review: A wonderful idea--an MPA3 player that will hold the equivalent of 100 or more CD's, with software included to copy from your own CD's to the player. I have been trying to get this to work for months, and there are just too many flaws for me to recommend it.
My system is pretty fast, 800 MHz, lots of memory, lots of disk space, Windows2000. The player and its software install pretty easily. But I have found the following flaws:
a/ First, many recordings ripped from CD just don't transfer correctly. Sometimes they're fine, but other times there are skips. You have no idea whether it worked until listening to the complete track.
b/ I have found the battery to run down after about an hour, which is far less than the expected battery life.
c/ Lately, after fully upgrading both the software and the player's firmware, I get error messages when trying to transfer sound files, that the player is in use or can't be detected. Since this occurs after it has transferred one or more files, I know it has been detected. I've run the recommended "cleanup", and this sometimes helps, sometimes not.
No response from Creative Labs tech support.
I would return this if I could. My recommendation is to wait for the next generation.
Rating: 
Summary: Update your software/firmware, Nomad isn't at fault
Review: There is no need for me to talk about the fantastic features of the Jukebox here-- plenty have already done that! I just want to point out that most of the problems mentioned in the "don't be fooled" review are problems with the MP3 software, not the Nomad Jukebox. I use a Mac and the Nomad came with SoundJam MP. I have found, however, that the free iTunes from Apple as well as MusicMatch Jukebox are compatible with my Nomad. As far as changing the ID tags, it is possible (in all 3 of these programs, anyway) to select all the tracks off an album and change the genre (category) of the entire thing at once-- a process that takes no more than 10 seconds an album. A faulty CDDB has nothing to do with the quality of the Nomad Jukebox-- if you are going to work with MP3's at all, you'll have to deal with bad submissions people have made to this DB. For the record, I've converted about 50 of my CD's so far and even the obscure ones had correct listings at CDDB, except I chose to change the genre of some of the albums.If your Nomad is playing that softly, you may want to check the settings on your MP3 exporting software. With headphones, I can't listen to mine past volume level 15 (of 20) for most albums without breaking my eardrums. Tracks can be recorded at a higher recording level if necessary, however, just be sure to set that _before_ exporting to the Nomad. It is a bit annoying that you can't edit tracks/genres/etc. once a track is on the Nomad. It's necessary to delete it, edit it, then re-export it. It is not necessary to buy the official Nomad car kit to use it with your car. I picked up a standard car tape adapter at Radio Shack for about $8 (plugs into the headphone jack) and a 12V DC converter for $10. No need to pay more or end up with extra headphones. The Nomad isn't perfect-- certainly its battery life is its biggest flaw. But it is still one of the niftiest gadgets I own. Most complaints, except the battery life, will likely be fixed in software/firmware updates. I read reviews from a few months ago, and already the firmware updates have fixed most people's older complaints (like inability to FF/RW within a track, etc.)
Rating:
Summary: Nomad Jukebox: Don't be fooled.
Review: I recieved the Jukebox as a gift a while ago. I thought it would be a great way to store and carry my whole mp3 collection and I was very excited. Unfortunately, I found the software very user unfriendly, the portable itself almost impossible to operate and, worst of all, the worst power-guzzler I've ever seen in a device of its size.
The software is easy to install, but to transfer MP3's you have to have full IDV3 tags on each track or it all gets dumped in the wrong folder or playlist, and that means laborious tagging that can take hours. The CDDB tracklistings are sometimes way off base, (it thought my Craig David was a Faith Hill CD or something like that), and when the software rips off CD's, it hardly compresses the files at all, averaging at around 12MB per song (!), which means you're not really using the available 6Gb to its fullest. The playlist/album sorting style is not very efficient, since you have to transfer files to the nomad before you can assign playlists, which means that more often than not you end up with alot of 'stray' albums, (i.e. an album with one or two songs on it). I finally got sick of it and just labelled all my individual songs as having one generic album name and had done with it.
Controlling the Nomad itself is rather difficult. You can select playlists or albums and queue them in the general playlist, but the controls are sluggish and the sound is, frankly, near inaudible, even on full blast.
Finally, there's the battery issue, which is really the worst of the Nomad's many faults. Creative offers four rechargeable batteries and a power cord for the unit but claims that it is designed to be compatible with other brands of batteries as well. UNFORTUNATELY, I decided to test that on a weekend trip, leaving the bulky DC converter home and deciding to buy batteries as needed. I bought a four pack of Duracell Ultras, and put them in. In HALF AN HOUR the Nomad shut down for lack of battery power. I checked the batteries and found that they still had half their power, but the Nomad refused to start up for more than a second. I bought regular Duracells, and guess what? The Nomad wouldn't even start! Normal batteries don't even have the juice to START the Nomad, let alone power it.
I got this as a GIFT and I feel I've been cheated. DON'T waste your money on this one. Try Archon's Jukebox. I haven't tried it out, but it's surely a better deal than this.
Rating:
Summary: great!!
Review: This is a great item. It has plenty of storage. The only bad thing is that it eats up batteries.
Rating:
Summary: Just one thing missing
Review: This has everything I want with one exception. There is no adapter for the car for power. I purchased the car adapter kit and you get another pair of earphones, which you do not need, and an adapter so the player can use the tape deck in your car to play through your car speakers. You also get a carrying case which I already have from the deluxe package. You end up paying $50 for the tape adapter. Just one more piece in the original package would have made a complete system. Other than that it is really great, great sound, great display, ease of use.
Rating: 
Summary: Great device, but there are definitely flaws.
Review: I picked one of these up recently, and overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I wish I could give it 3 and a half stars, but 3 will do. Here's why: The First two days after buying it: No real problems. Unit worked great, and I dumped a full 6 gigs of archived music onto it without too much hassle. The Creative Playcenter software was fairly easy to use, and I had to change a lot of the ID3 information with it, but overall it wasn't too painful. I do wish that Creative would dump the stupid-looking pseudo-dialogs in their software and devote their time to slicker functionality. The fact that I can't resize the Playcenter window drives me up the wall every time I open it -- you only get to pick from two small sizes. Also, how about a pack-in utility to generate ID3 information based on file name? I had to grab a shareware tagger. On the evening of the third day, I powered up the Nomad for my daily walk (Yes, I've been walking with it, and it hasn't skipped once). It hung at the 'Preparing Library' screen and never, ever advanced to the Active Queue List. Pressing the reset button on the bottom of the unit didn't fix it. Performing a drive cleanup from the maintenance menu didn't fix it. Finally, I had to completely re-format the whole hard drive and that got it. Then I had to download all my music to it all over again, and I had to change all the same ID3 information all over again...quite frustrating. Tech support was quick to comment on the issue (I had a response the next day) but by then I'd already done the format. I realize that before the calamitous crash, I had flashed the Nomad's firmware to 2.91, the latest offered by the Creative website at the time. It worked for my walk that night, but I wonder if performing the upgrade somehow changes how files are accessed on boot and that's why it crashed. It's been about two weeks since I restored everything, and there have been no further problems. In fact, they've added some good functionality, like being able to fast-forward through songs. Now that I've had a lot of time to play with the software (I have Playcenter version 2.5 now) and the hardware, I've decided that I probably can't live without my Nomad for long periods of time. Being able to take a good portion of my CD collection with me is way, way cool. I have some suggestions for those of you who are still experiencing problems, for what it's worth: * Upgrade your Nomad firmware and PC software to the latest versions at Creative's website. After flashing your firmware, FORMAT your hard drive, and consider losing your music collateral damage. It'll be much more stable once you're current. If you're just starting out, do this before you move any music over to it. * I compressed all of my variable-bitrate and 128kbit .mp3 files to 112 without any audible loss of quality. Doing this freed up about 20% more space for music. Not bad! * Grab a freeware ID3 editor/tagger online. The tools supplied with the Nomad just aren't good enough. There are some great bulk-edit utilities out there. * Creative's Nomad FAQ says you can jog with your player. I've done it and it works great -- it has yet to skip. I'd recommend a belt with a pouch for carrying. This gives it a little more shock resistance as well.
Rating:
Summary: Leave the CD's Home!!!
Review: this is a most outstanding product. anyone considering a portable CD player should seriously consider this step ahead in digital music playback and recording... Mobile DJ's: This is an item you can't do without. If you think you don't need it, then you don't understand what it can do...
Rating:
Summary: The best u can buy
Review: I got the nomad jukebox about two weeks ago and its the best thing ive ever bought it not only holds 6gb of regular music but it also hold data files like aplications so you can back up an entire(just about)Hard Drive which came in handy when my computer crashed i had all my files saved on the nomad and it saved me from lousing every thing i ever had. It saved me from complete lose of everything. The new firmware update allows you to bookmark everything(including E-books) It comes in handy when your listening to an E-book. The newest part of it is the new Savantium software which converts News,Sports,Music News, And Quotes of the day this can be very helpful for people on the go like me. It can also hook up to AOL,MSN,Outlook, and others. SO you can listen to your emails where ever and when ever you want. The Eax Support is awesome it can make any one and i mean any one into an acoustic singer. From Rap, to rock to any other type and holds 1500 songs. What else could you ask for in an mp3 player It has it all sound ajustment,tons of storage(back up device to). Plays email and is upgradeable.And recordable features This Is a must have for recording people, Music lovers and email.
Rating:
Summary: BEST/COOLEST MP3 PLAYER
Review: THIS IS THE COOLEST MP3 PLAYER OUT THERE TODAY!!! I HAVE AMOST 2000 SONGS ON IT AND IT IS THE SIZE OF A CD WALKMAN!!!!! CANT SAY ENOUGH ABOUT THIS PLAYER!!!!
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