Rating: 
Summary: No Delivery
Review: Amazon takes your order - Promises Christmas delivery then sends a Christmas Eve email stating that delivery is delayed until mid January due to stocking problems so you give the email in place of the gift. Then they cancel the order on January 5th because they can't get the product anyway. Their solution. A $5 gift off certificate so they can screw you again next time.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent product with a few minor problems.
Review: I became interested in getting a MP3 player when I got a new work computer; while my office bars the addition of any non-work software, it doesn't care if you load CDs onto the hard drive. Over time, I loaded hundreds of CDs onto the computer, and the idea of carrying around all of my music with me became attractive. Many people recommended the Ipod, and I borrowed one from a friend. While the ease of use was very impressive, I was put off by the price -- about $130 more than what I paid Amazon for this player. Also, there is the need to send the Ipod to replace the batteries when they die (which they will). I have had the Nomad Jukebox for about three weeks now, and I am very happy with it. It's only slightly heavier than the Ipod, and has a longer battery life. The storage capacity is great for me -- I have a large but not huge CD collection and have loaded everything I want to listen to on it and still have 13 gigabytes free. The controls are somewhat harder to use than the Ipod, but I have gotten use to them, and even at the beginning did not think would justify the huge difference in price. Loading CDs was somewhat time-consuming, but I think it would have been with the Ipod as well. I had never loaded my CDs on to my home computer, using my work computer instead. My office would not let me put the software on to my work computer. This meant that I had to take all my CDs and do in a fairly short period of time what I had done over a year at work. If the music had been on my home computer, the transfer would have been accomplished very quickly. I have an older computer, running Windows 98 SE, and so those of you with something more recent would find the process even quicker. My only reservations about this product concern the tagging process and the way it interacts with the software. When you load a disc, you go to an internet cite for the insertion of the names for the CD and the tracks. While the listing process is accurate for track names(unlike Windows' reliance on the AMG, which frequently gets track listings out of order), the results can be odd. The CD will be classified into a number of genres, and in multidisk sets, you can get separate classifications for different disks by the same artist and the same performance. For example, Jimi Hendrix's 2 CD Live at the Fillmore East had one CD classifed as Classic Rock and the other Psychidelic Rock. Perhaps the weirdest was one of Bruce Springsteen's CDs from the Tracks set being classified as Goth Rock. You can change any of these, but need to be paying attention when the information is downloaded before you copy it. A somewhat more troublesome problem is that the internet site will sometimes give different discs of the same set slightly different names. This will cause the discs not to show up together when you are looking for them on the Nomad. Again, you can change this, but it's harder to spot a minor variation in the title when you don't have the title of the other disk in front of you. Other tagging problems result (I think) from the Nomad's operating system. If you have two tracks with exactly the same name on one disk, it will not copy both -- it gives you the option of skipping the second or overwriting the first with the second. This is rarely a problem with any kind of popular music, but can be troublesome with classical music where tracks are identified by tempi. I also had it happen when recording a jazz set where there were a number of outtakes of the same song without numbering them separately. The way to fix this is to rename the track by adding a number yourself to the end of the track listing. Also, I can't understand why the software does not ignore "The" when it lists the CDs in alphabetical order. Finally, making playlists from the computer can be complicated because the tracks are listed individually, and are organized by CD, which are not listed but are organized in alphabetical order. In other words, to locate a track using the software on the computer and add it to a playlist, you must know the name of the CD it appears on and then find the track by locating the location of the unlisted CD by looking for tracks that appear on it. You don't have this problem if you make your playlist from the Nomad, where CDs are listed separately. You need your computer, however, if you want to add tracks to a playlist. These are minor problems, and I list them to save anyone else the trouble of discovering them. Had I not been in such a hurry to load CDs, I would have spotted them sooner. Also, if I had already loaded and tagged by CDs on my home computer, this would not have been an issue. The bottom line for me is that I am very happy with this product. Apple's Ipod is dominant now, but I have to wonder whether the price differential will mean that in 3 or 4 years its market share will drop significantly.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply doesnt shine
Review: I'd like to start off saying that before this product i was using an Archos Jukebox Recorder... What made this product so great to me was the open source OS called Rockbox... Based on hardware one could assume the Archos players were horrible (which by hardware standards...they were)... But because a few fine men and women took the time to create the upstanding rockbox software, the Archos became a top notch player for me with intuitive features out the wazoo... Now we come to the Zen Xtra... First I'll start off by saying that this players hardware is pretty good... The sound is indeed excellent and the form factore is not bad (but still rather larger than i had expected)... What really made this a mediocre mp3 player for me was the software. Not just the transfer software (which was a hellishly horrible experience) but also the player's software. First of all, many actions that the player utilizes don't make sense.. Bookmarks for example, are an excellent feature... but not on this player... Rather than creating a directory for bookmarks to be found in one area, the user must actually find the track where the bookmark was made..this makes no sense and sort of defeats the purpose of audio bookmarks... The dynamic playlists ("now playing", i belive Creative calls it) feels very awkward at times and some menus simply take to long to get to and operate... Well, anyway i could go on and on on why this player didn't meet my expectations... I'll just say this... For the average music listener not expecting much...this may be a satisfactory mp3 player... But for someone who cares about thier music collection and wants fluid and responsive playback... I can't recommend this product.
Rating:
Summary: in a word ... AMAZING
Review: i got this for christmas. i was going to get a 10GB ipod, but after looking at the 10 DAY WARRANTY FOR IPOD AND WWW.IPODSDIRTYSECRET.COM (BATTERY LASTS 18 MONTHS ; IT costs like 200 dollars to replace - now you mail it off to get the battery replaced for like 99 ... what a big improvement ... lol) and the fact that lots of people have had problems with iPODs on windows computers, i realized this is a much better buy. Not only is it more affordable, but its a better player for windows, which is what i have. anyway, on with the review.
so far i've only had it since christmas, so i cant tell you much about the battery life. it hasnt gone below the second notch (i charge mine whenever i'm at home and not using it), so the battery life seems fine (so far). SOFTWARE: for the people who complain about software, please, stop complaining. once you hook the thing up to the computer (via the USB cable), the machine instantly recognizes the fact that it's there & installs the drivers. from there, you transfer files from your computer to the mp3 player (with the help of the media sniffer...read the manual). my only complaint would be that you need id3 tags & that takes a while to do if your mp3 files don't have them. if you're copying CDs with windows media, its really simple to give your songs id3 tags, so thats what i do. oh...and file transfers are fast & easy. THE PLAYER: it's silver. a little weighty (9 ounces ... no biggie), but otherwise fine. people complain about the scroll wheel, but its not a big deal at all (though it is just a LITTLE annoying at times). it's easy. the buttons are easy to use, and its easy to navigate. the big backlight makes things easy to see, and the writing is big enough for people to see. my favorite thing about the nomad is the EAX feature. you can customize bass, etc. like usual, but also you can customize the sound of the player (like how it would sound in a concert hall, jazz club, etc). its really cool. sound quality is AMAZING. i was expecting worse, but its really good (especially if your files have good sound quality). you can also slow a song down & speed it up, which is cool too. BUT THE EAR BUDS SUCK! BUY NEW ONES ASAP. every time you move your face or something they pop out. for a 250 dollar player, they could have thrown in nice headphones. a remote would have been cool too ... but lets not push it. oh... one more thing. i forgot, the case doesn't fit. my case doesnt close...maybe mine was just faulty, but the case isnt that great. so far the player froze on me once (i started pushing buttons before it loaded) but since is hard drive based - you have to expect that. so all you do is stick a pin or something small in the reset button & you're golden. also, you can store data on it, which is a plus. for all you people who want to buy an iPOD just to say you have an iPOD, don't bother, this is a MUCH better buy. HOPE I HELPED !
Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Review: Well in the beginning i was asking around for mp3 players. So then i came across the ipod (10 GB). So i was all excited about the ipod but then the day before i went to Best Buy to check out the other mp3 players and i came across this one. Well i decided to get this one. Well i have to say that this product is very good i mean it might be a little big but it still fits in your pocket. Well surely this is a product that i recommend someone in getting rather than any other mp3 player (at that size and the price). Well just one con- its not really plug and play at first i mean its very confusing to start the program but one you do it, it will be a breeze. Enjoy
Rating: 
Summary: difficult to manage large library
Review: I purchased and returned this product, but not because of any glaring flaws in the design. It is an extremely cool gizmo. In fact, everyone who saw it thought I was "The Man" and won't believe I returned it. So what's the problem?
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I made the mistake of thinking I could easily manage my mp3 library with this device. I initially loaded about 3700 tracks with the intent of ripping the majority of my remaining CDs to mp3. I quickly discovered that the Nomad wasn't going to work for me. The reasons below will be true for ANY product in this category. Here's why:
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1. I don't need the Nomad at the office. I have my mp3's stored on my workstation.
2. I don't need the Nomad at home for the same reason (although using it to sync between the two PC's might be a reason enough to get it.)
3. It's a hazard in the car. The navigation is nice enough, but scrolling and searching through thousands of tracks, hundreds of albums or artists, or even dozens of genres is not conducive to save driving. (Throw a cell phone and you're asking for trouble.)
3a. Creating playlists using the included software to minimize issue 3 wasn't as easy as I would have liked. The bottom line:
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If I have to get into making playlists to avoid rear-end collisions, I'll just buy a regular portable CD/MP3 player and burn myself collections of about 120 tracks per disk. Sure it's "old school" to carry a CD wallet around, but it will be easier to manage and I'll save around 250 bucks. One major complaint:
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My only significant complaint is sound quality. The EAX sound enhancement feature didn't do enough for me and the custom EQ was a limited 5 band EQ. This did not give me enough control. I wanted to use the Nomad with a cassette style car adapter. I was unable achieve a sound quality on par with my simple portable CD player with "bass boost." The sound quality of my CD player is superior in this setting to the Nomad. One minor complaint:
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The documentation says to extend battery life, do not fill player to capacity. Gee ... thanks a lot Creative.
Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get any better than this.
Review: Before asking for the Zen Xtra specifically for Christmas I researched many different MP3 players but finally decided on this one, and now that I have it I couldn't be happier and I'm convinced it's the best one out there. Many people have written about the software being its one downfall, personally I haven't had a single problem with the software, I'm running Windows ME. The CD ripping to mp3 is so easy, and you can even rip the cd directly to the mp3 player, so it won't take up space on your pc hard drive. The software runs smooth, it's nice to look at, it's very organized, easy to follow and makes things very simple. The controls on the player are very simple, no need for a manual. The player is fast and sounds great, it also has many options like slowing or speeding up the music, or making it sound like you're hearing the music in a huge auditorium. The battery lasts very long when playing music, but writing files to the player drains the battery fast, so you need to have it plugged into an outlet when sending files. Playlists can be made on the fly, without aid of a computer, and you can use play modes like shuffle and repeat for your 'now playing' selections or playlists. The software couldn't be better and the mp3 player works like a dream, I couldn't give this anything but a 5, I wish there was a 6.
Rating:
Summary: This thing roxxorz
Review: I purchased this player last week. I did a little research on the web and this is the player I decided on. I refuse to buy anything made by Apple and the Nomad is about $200 cheaper anyway. I have had no problem what-so-ever with this product. The software installed flawlessly and without any problems on my Windows 2k machine. The headphones aren't the best, but you can really expect much out of the small headphones you insert in the ear cavity. The battery life seems good, takes very lttle time to charge, it uploads mp3s quickly and there is no delay between songs. Took me a few tries to get use to the navigation, but it's a very user friendly player IMO. I haven't messed with the firmware at all, the player worked perfect for me right out of the box. All-in-all, this is another excellent Creative product. If you have the money and need 40 GB, this is the player for you. It's small, light and nice looking and the display is decent as well. I would recommend this product to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this instead of an iPod
Review: With this MP3 Player you get much more memory for much less than an iPod. An iPod with the same amount of memory is $150 cheaper. the reason for this the iPod has "a better user interface". i have found that the inter face on the nomad is very easy to use if you have a basic knowledge of a computer. Also the iPod has games on it. Games are ok for a cell phone, but MP3's are for music.
Rating: 
Summary: Good For the money, but software is awful
Review: After looking over multiple large mp3 players, i decided to get this one. for the price and size and features, you can't beat the price. A 10 gb Ipod is just as much and i have heard from multiple sources that the Ipod is very loud and you can heard the hard drive everytime it spins, accesses files or does antyhing. I think the reson for the creative being larger is for sound dampening and protection, whihc is a plus, but then again it is only speculation. The buttons and interface are very easy to use. Simple click buttons, back buttons volume and display are very easy to read, access and use. But the major problem i had was with the software. You are not able to simply import files, but rather you have to go through multiple steps to find them. the instructions that come with it don't explain how to make things simple. the quick sync isn't any good becuase it either needs to be configured properly or just isn't very useful. I tried to make sense of the file transfer program and just got more confused. i tried to take a cd and simply rip it onto a hard drive and then transfer into the player. well that was not a simple task. i ended up suing windows player to make mp3's (actually wma files) and then using the probram to transfer. i think the lack of the mp3 player being able to run without special software is also a downer, becuase it makes it more cumbersome for people less computer illiterate. Buy this for the storage and price, avoid it if you know nothing about computers.
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