Rating: 
Summary: Don't Be A Sucker! The Nomad Is A Great Buy!
Review: I was so nervous about purchasing an MP3 player since it is a relatively new technology and there are so many things that can and do go wrong with it. However, after reading about a bazillion reviews on the Nomad and the iPod, I decided to go with the Nomad and I have not regretted it in the past 3 months that I've had it.
First there is the obvious: PRICE! I paid $273 out the door for my 30GB (And the price has gone down since!). The 20GB iPod is $400! Sure it looks neat, but not hundreds-of-dollars-over-priced neat.
Secondly, I am a PC user. And in the grand Apple tradition, their product only works well if you have an Apple computer. I read dozens of upset reviews about how the iPod was virtually useless with their PC.
Third, accessories. The Nomad's battery lasts longer, and unlike with the iPod, you don't have to send Apple $100 for a replacement battery when it eventually dies. Apparently they didn't over-price it enough if they need the extra cash that badly.
The Nomad comes with a nice snug case that protects it nicely. So does the iPod as long as you get the $400 20GB or bigger. It also comes with ear buds, which kinda suck, but what stock headphones don't? Invest in a good pair, which you should do anyway if you're really a music fan.
Also, unless you have FireWire on your comp (not likely, not many do) then you have to buy the USB cord seperately! (Another $25-$40) The Nomad comes with the USB 2.0 cord so you can start transferring files right away!
Some of the complaints I've heard about the Nomad I have not had myself. One is that the software is terrible. The software is just fine, the only problem I found was that the directions on how to use it weren't the most helpful. All you have to do if you don't understand is just tinker around with it until you get it. It is fairly intuitive and once you do it, it is sooooo easy.Another complaint is that it is too fragile, i.e. you can't bang it around or drop it. Well duh, you wouldn't want to drop your Discman either would you? I have actually dropped mine twice (on carpet) and the only thing that happened was the casing popped off. I have also banged it tons of times on walls and corners while it was in my back pocket (and without the protective case) and it didn't miss a beat. Some people say it is sooo big and bulky. Yes, it is bigger than the iPod, but that doesn't mean it's big. It is SIGNIFICANTLY smaller than any Discman or Walkman, so what's the problem, it still fits in my pocket. Lastly, some people have a problem with the controls or they don't like the scrollbar. I have had no trouble with either, maybe these people have extremely fat fingers, I don't know. So if you want something that's gonna hold TONS of music and you don't want to pay 500 bucks or sell your soul to the devil to get it, then definately go with the Nomad Jukebox. The iPod isn't better, in fact in my opinion it isn't even as good. It's all just hype and advertising, and you sure are paying for it. It is really simply a matter of overcoming snobbery.
Rating: 
Summary: Great player, But might be issues with earphone jack
Review: Beside the controls being a little odd at first, I figured out how to use it in my car while driving without looking at the screen or controls to scroll my music. I only have 1000 tracks copied to it so it is not hard when I setup folders for the different tracks. Very powerful unit and I love it soo much. But on around Jan 25th I was heart broken when it started to give me sound problem. I had mine since Dec 25th 2003 and it broke on Jan 25th 2004. The ear phone jack stopped working on the left side. I waited until Feb 15th to send it back. Support was great and issues me a RMA right away. It was replaced within 10days. I just hope the replacement had the same problem and they fixed the earphone jack the correct way. It looks like a lot of owners have ear phone jack problems.
Rating: 
Summary: ! Beware of Creative Labs !
Review: Unfortunately, I failed to thoroughly research this product before I purchased it. I suffered the same dilemma as many others: the headphone jack crapped out after 4 days of non-rigorous use. I decided to go ahead and have it serviced through Creative Labs since it was still within the "short-lived" 90 day warranty and do not live near a Circuit City. After two weeks of waiting, they finally got around to repairing the product. I was told I was at fault for breaking the soldering joints in the headphone jack and they required me to pay a $50.00 fee to repair it. Ironically, five minutes prior a tech representative had told me that Creative Labs was trying to reinforce these headphone jacks because people were having problems with them; clearly, the headphone jacks are not strong enough to begin with. I am currently working with Circuit City to return the product, although the 30 day return policy has expired. Their customer support is far superior to Creative Labs.
Creative Labs advertises that this mp3 player is priced up to 30% less than the I-Pod. Now I know why; you get what you pay for. Actually I take that back. For $230, I would expect a product that lasts longer than 4 days and half-way decent customer support. I have failed to experience either. I do not recommend this product nor any other product Creative Labs provides.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT ITEM THAT WAS A MISTAKE TO BUY
Review: I bought the NOMAD JUKEBOX 60GB MP3 player was was quite pleased with it. However after about one month of use I started to notice that one channel of the stereo was intermittent. After about two days of this and fiddling with the earphone plug, it quit working completely. I returned the item to Creative Labs with 30 days still on the warranty and was told that I was at fault for the damage and that I had to pay for the repair. I'm 52 yrs. old and did not do anything except plug in the ear plug and pull the ear plug on the player. BEWARE OF THIS COMPANY!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent quality product
Review: I couldn't be happier with the performance and ease of use of the Nomad Zen Xtra. The software is simple to use to sort your existing music and rip new music. CDDB functionality allows you to automtically label new CDs and tracks. Clearly the iPod is the popular choice, so I'll go with why I think the Nomad is more practical than the iPod:
*Longer battery life
*The 40 Gb Nomad is about $100 LESS than the 20 Gb iPod
*Windows friendly (especially if you're PC only supports USB and not firewire).
*The buttons are more consistant with old school walkmans that I've been using for years (Volume control, track selection, etc.) Why the Nomad isn't the iPod (not so good reasons):
*Accessories. You can't dress it up like the iPod.
*The included case is functional. It's protective and has a belt clip, but it is a little awkward.
*It's bigger than the iPod: noticably, if you have them next to each other. Don't get me wrong, though. It still fits easily in all my pockets. *The iPod is a pretty stable device, from what I've read. In the month that I have had my Nomad it has "hung" once. I had to remove the battery and turn it back on. Everything came back to the state it was the previous time I had turned it on. (Ironically, this happened as I am writing this review. Thus, the rating of 4 stars and not 5) I think electronic/hardware stability is pretty important cause if that goes what can you do? I have a particular concern living in a foreign country with absolutely no way to return this should it die. If you absolutley must be cool, get the iPod. If you want to save some money, buy the Nomad.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Build Quality
Review: bought this unit when i got shall i say angry at Apple s Itunes music store. I had one of the new Apple Ipods which i havw since sold on Ebay. As for the Zen Xtra. the build quality and design is horrible compared to the solid feeling Ipod. In my case the front casing which covers the replaceable battery keeps popping off if I hold it in the wrong way. There is a tab on the bottom which is supposed to release the face but if i hold the sides it keeps popping off. The blue tinted backlight is hard to read and the menus are hard to use compared to the Ipod. this unit feels like a cheap walkman. It is also bulky and heavy. The one good thing I can say is the sound is better than the Ipod which i guess is worth something.
Rating:
Summary: Buyer Beware!
Review: I've been using the 60GB Nomad for 4 months now and my experience has definately not been a good one. First: The included software is possibly one of the worst applications I've ever encountered. It has not worked properly since I've gotten the thing and to make matter's worse, it screws up differently depending on which computer I run it on. On my newest machine it neither transfers music to the Nomad, nor will it allow you to have a simular song name no matter who the artist is. It simply overwrites the older version! Absolutlely terrible! Experienced Nomad users recommend you purchase another program from a 3rd party, but why should you have to? If Creative Labs can't get this part of the package right, why should you buy anything from them in the first palce? Second: Battery life is a joke! I have yet to get 5 hours out of a charge, and that is with all the audio effects turned off. Third: The included case didn't even fit the player. Another waste of money. Fourth: The side mounted controls are in the perfect place to be hit by accident. The front mounted controls on other players are there for a reason. The selector switch feels as if it will break with only a few weeks of use. Another example of Creative's poor design. All in all I can't recomend this player to anyone. I'm not an Apple fan by a long shot, but you definately get what you pay for, and in the case of the Nomad, the lowere price is offset by the 3rd rate quality of the overall package. Creative Audio should be ashamed of themselves. This is just an attempt to cash in on somebody else's good idea. Definately check out players from other manufacturers first.
Rating:
Summary: Zen Xtra Vs. Polaroid Juke Jam
Review: I went to Frye's Electronics 3 weeks ago to purchase the Creative Labs 40GB Zen Xtra, when I noticed the Polaroid Juke Mam. I was impressed by the FM tuner - complete with 10 presets (it even records FM programs to MP3 files), the voice recorder, and nice large LCD screen were nice too. It was also priced within $10.00 of the Zen Xtra, so I opted for this unknown (unresearched) option. The sound was great, and I really loved how easy and logical the modified joysick-style selector button works. A week later, and after loading over 19GB of data to its hard drive, the thing simply locked-up and would not reboot. Fry's promptly replaced it for another. The second player's screen began to fade beyond readability after 4 days. That window gave me time to remove most of my data, and return the second Juke Jam to the store. This time, I traded it for the 40GB Zen Xtra. I have had ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEMS with the Creative Labs model. The product rep was there in the store. He told me they recently upgraded the firmware, allowing simple drag-and-drop tranfer of data. It not only performs better, but it also has an AWESOME EAX sound enhancement tool. Honestly, it made my very basic car stereo sound like I was listening to my BOSE home theater!!! He mentioned they should be releasing a player with an FM-tuner soon, but I wanted my portable music options now. The features of the two items may appear to be similiar; in fact, the Polaroid features look better at first glance. But, I have to put my money (nearly $300.00) where the quality is. Creative Labs created a portable music experience! I don't mean to sound like some kind of spokesman for CL, but this thing simply ROCKS!!! Did I mention it's nearly $200.00 cheaper than the IPOD (which by the way, does not play the smaller sized, better quality WMA files). I LOVE the size of the IPOD, but that feature doesn't come close to justifying it's $489.00 price tag. Macintosh has once again, priced themselves out of the market. Sure there are thousands of people that have IPODs, but they could have cornered the entire MP3 portable player market. Fortunately, Apple once again let the competition create feature-packed players for $100.00's of dollars less. If you want real quality in a player that plays MP3, WMA's, and features an unmatched sound processor, go with the Zen Xtra. If you've got the money, and don't really need as much space as I do, get the IPOD. Otherwise, wait for more of the research and design to shake-out in this industry. There are sure to be some very interesting innovations coming to this Christmas!!! Today - ZEN XTRA ROCKS HARD!!!
Rating:
Summary: Great capacity, decent interface, horrible software
Review: My experience with the Creative Zen mp3 players has been mixed. As for physical size, they are rather bulky when compared to other mp3 players like the iPod, or my favorite, the Dell Jukebox. The Zen's have a removable case, which is nice to switch the battery, but makes for a loose construction. Also, while the Zen's can have up to an amazing 60GB of space, the controls on the player are uncomfortable. The actual interface is pretty good and intuitive, but the small toggle switch on the side is painful after awhile and hard to manage for bigger hands. The software that comes with the player is absolutely worthless. I had multiple problems getting the player's drivers to work with the included software and with windows media player. The best bet would be to get Notmad Explorer from Red Chair Software. Also, I have heard issues about the player not recognizing some tags. All in all, if you need alot of capacity, this is a good player. Otherwise, stick to something more solid and compact with good software.
Rating:
Summary: works great for me...
Review: First off durability. I've had the original 20GB Jukebox for almost a year now. The first week I had it the headphone jack broke, but i returned it to amazon for a replacement. [* more on this below] Now it's almost a year later and my new one still works great. Once in a while it'll freeze up, but the reset button does the trick. I've dropped it a couple times and given it a few dents - still works fine. I use it a LOT - probably once a day. The charge on the battery has gone down a little, but it still holds up for 5-6 hours (out of 8 when it was new). * To be specific, one of the little bendy metal contacts in the jack got shoved too far sideways and so I was only hearing through one ear-piece. This happens when the plug is half way into the jack and it gets shoved violently sideways; this can also happen if you drop the player and catch it by the chord (so that it pops out just a little bit and then gets twisted by the weight) - be careful with the jack and it'll work just fine. There are probably higher incidents of this happening with the zen because the headphone cord is not long enough to allow the player to land on the floor before it catches itself by the chord, and because the jack is L-shaped. I'm going to make three comments that are not well covered in the other reviews: 1) The playlist features are much better on the Zen than the iPod. You can make playlists anytime and modify them while they are playing. So you can start playing the first song and add other songs to the play list while it is playing already, then go back and delete songs you have second thoughts about before you get to them (or during or after). You can even interrupt the playlist to preview a song from the library you are thinking about adding, and it will resume from where it left off when you are done. So handy I never realized how much I would miss it with an iPod. If you want a custom playlist with an iPod, you have to completely make the on-the-go playlist and then play it - and no changing your mind: you cannot modify it once you start playing it nor delete songs from it (as far as I know - you just have to start over). You can save playlists anytime on the zen too - I don't simply because it is so easy to make new ones all the time. My favorite thing to do is throw a few albums on the playlist and put it on random - instant custom playlist in less than a minute! try that on the iPod. 2) the headphone jack is a really good quality (fidelity wise, maybe not durability). i have some beyerdynamic dt-880s - top of the line and suck a hell of a lot of power. they actually sound decent straight out of the zen. i use a headphone amplifier when i can, and it sounds phenomenal with this arrangement. Using a tape adapter into an audi a6 10-speaker bose system is just amazing. the tape format cuts out a little bit of the low end (maybe below about 50Hz?) and adds a teeny bit of hiss, but seeing as the low end is getting a bit muddy in my 5-year-old car, it's an improvement. The rest of the spectrum is CD-crisp. I've plugged this into all different kinds of amplifiers and headphones and always been impressed. Beats any portable cd player i've ever owned (panasonic was always on the top of my list there). 3) i have one gripe with the (older) zen OS: it doesn't always pick up the track length info - especially on longer tracks. Mostly it works, but there are times, especially on half-hour-long or longer tracks, where this can get annoying, because the Zen will not fast-forward unless it knows how long the track is. Seeing as though this would be an easy fix, I bet they corrected this since the original zen. All in all, I'd say, at half the price of the similarly-sized iPod at the time, I made the right choice.
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