Rating: 
Summary: Nomads are wonderful, but be carefull!
Review: I first bought a 6 Gig Nomad Jukebox (original). Unfortunatly it was dropped and damaged a year after I bought it. the batteries would not charge. So I took it back to Best Buy where I bought it and exchanged it for a newer Zen 20 Gig model. In that model the Hard Drive just died one morning before my class. It's nothing major, just a bad hard drive, any hard drive mp3 player can have that problem. So Rule of Thumb, no matter what you end up buying, GET THE EXTENDED WARRANTY! It always pays off. Hope I've been of some help.
Rating: 
Summary: Piece of Junk
Review: I am a soldier serving in Baghdad right now. I bought the Nomad when I went home on leave and it worked great for about a month. The other day when I was listening to a song, it locked up and will not do anything now. It says I have a harddisk problem. And since I'm out here I can't mail it back under my 90 days and they won't help me out cause they say that the conditions here are not covered under the warranty. It worked good for a while. It did lock up on me a couple of times. And then it just froze and now I'm out $300 for their piece of junk.
Rating:
Summary: You will be very disappointed with this product.
Review: The reviews of this product can be roughly divided into two groups: (1) those who have had the product for a few weeks and (2) those have had the product for a few months. Those who have had the Nomad for a few weeks are mostly thrilled with it. The price is way below an iPOD of the same size. The Nomad is only sligtly larger than an iPOD. The sound quality is very good. The controls are somewhat harder to use, and there are some oddities about the software tagging system, but most people can live with this. Because of the large capacity of the Nomad, owners can load hundreds of CDs on to it. For most people, they can carry around all or almost all of their music collection. Having access to so much music where ever you go is terrific. They fall in love with the product.And then it breaks. Usually around the time the 90 day warranty expires. Typically, the problem is the headphone jack -- it was for me and many others. The Nomad is sent back to Creative Labs. They decide that the owner was responsible for the damage and so even if it is returned within the warranty period, Creative will charge you to fix it. In my case, the bill was $81, about a third of what I paid for it. Like many others, I had not abused the product, and had tried to take care of it. If my level of care wasn't good enough, I had to expect that even if I paid to have it fixed it would break again in a month or two. I'm convinced by my own experience and that of many other people who have posted here who have had the same experience that the product is defectively designed, and will not hold up to normal use. The headphone jack seems to be a major problem. The one other thing I observed while I had the Nomad is that the front cover, which is taken off to have access to the battery, seemed to come undone very easily. The headphone jack failure seems to occur just about when the warrranty period is to expire. Even if it hasn't expired, Creative is likely to claim that the owner caused the damage which in turn voids the warranty. And most stores will not take back a product 90 days after purchase. This means that you will have the Nomad long enough to load a lot of music on to it, and get used to having it. So when it breaks, as it will, you will find yourself very disappointed and depressed at the loss of the Nomad. You will find it very hard or impossible to get you money back. You will have a very expensive paperweight. There are not a lot of good options out there. Most people say buy an iPOD, but they are pretty expensive and also require you to send the product back to the factory just to replace the battery. My suggestion is to wait to see how the market develops. Maybe Creative will come out with a better design, although it will be hard for me and its other customers to trust it again. Maybe more competitors will bring out similar products. And maybe the answer is to buy an iPOD. Whatever you do, don't buy this product. You will be sorry if you do.
Rating:
Summary: What a junk
Review: What a junk. Every time NOMAD thinks the file is corrupt the OS freezes. The only way to recover is to plug the power cord and go into recovery mode. So if you happen to be out of the house and you have a frozen OS you can't use NOMAD until you get home. After OS froze twice on me in the subway I returned the jukebox.
Rating: 
Summary: O man, not cool.
Review: Ok , im writing yet another review, about a week from my previous one. Honestly, i love this player.
ONE HORRIBLE FLAW, or mayybe more than one. once again, the sound is awesome, the batterly life is only 6-8 hours, and that is because all my music is 320 kbps which DOES affect the battery life. Ok so i donno about what other people said, how the player breaks and stuff, and the headfone jack, fortunately that did not happen to me. However, my hard drive did fail, and i have not dropped it once. Therefore im saying im returning it right now, and i will see wat happens with my next zen xtra (same replacement). If that one fails too, and i hope if it does, let it happen in the first 90 days, not later, cuz thats the warranty. if it does, ill give up.
basically wat happened, is that the hard drive failed. thats it. i cant do anything about it, and i have to send back.
the only good thing about this whole process, is that im getting like a 34 dollar amount back, because of the price difference between when i bought it, and now.
Basically u can see that i have given the player 3 stars, instead of 1. you know why? because other people that complain about this player are talking BULL, this player is awesome, it just breaks fast, which is horrible. Now honestly, i love this player, but with all seriousness, i would not recommend it to other people, because of the breakdown flaw. and i honestly would not recomment the people of the IPOD, THAT CRAP SUCKS BIG DONKEY..... never mind. i hope my next player doesnt breakdown.. Honestly, the best players without any flaws were the goddam cd players. this is all i have to say.
Rating:
Summary: Why can't it be rated ZERO stars?
Review: DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT--I took perfect care of this player and still it died in the week after the lousy 90 day warranty ended. Nearly 4000 songs went up in smoke. The software is not good either and the driver has trouble working with other SOUND BLASTER products, which is very dumb.
Rating:
Summary: 2 Zen Xtras broken within 2 months!
Review: Like most people I narrowed my mp3 player search down to this and the iPod. I figured, sure the software (iTunes), interface, and design of the iPod blow the Zen out of the water, but all that cannot be worth all the extra money. So I went with the Zen thinking that as long as it plays music and sounds good, I'm fine with it. First, I install Media Source, which erased the tags of about 2500 mp3s which I had so easily organized in iTunes, which was my player until I got the Zen. Oh well, I spent the hours re-tagging everything. Then, third day I had the thing, it crashes for no reason. Just won't work. I take it back to Best Buy and get a new one for free. The new one works for about a month and a half and then goes down the drain. The headphone jack just won't work. So I think, "two broken for no reason within two months. This is bad." Luckily with my second Zen I bought a service plan from Best Buy, otherwise it would've been $350 gone! Best Buy let me pay the difference between the Zen and the iPod and I am now the happy owner of an iPod.
Those of you thinking - as I did - that the iPod is not worth the money, you are wrong. Size is not a huge factor. The Zen is bigger, but not too big for pockets, etc. However, the design is not as solid. For instance, when I dropped my Zen on a soft surface, like a bed, the battery case would release, and out pops the battery. This happened even more in my pocket. Also, the scroll wheel is awful. If you hold it down and wait till you get to the right band, it usually goes way past it. Also, its too centered on playlists. If you play one song, it will play that one and then stop. The iPod will continue to play until you stop it. This means you don't have to constantly build playlists. The Zen plays music and sounds good. It is cheaper. But its design, software, and interface flaws are more significant than one would think, and these flaws are emphasized once you use a product like the iPod. I was willing to deal with these negative attributes and save money until two of them broke on me. And for PC people, another reason I went with the Zen originally was compatibility. The iPod works perfectly with PC. Of course you have to pay for the Firewire to USB cord, or the Firewire port. But if you wanna transfer music at a reasonable speed with the Zen you have to have USB 2.0. Unless your computer is pretty new, you'll have to buy a USB 2.0 port which is the same price as Firewire, and they're basically the same speed.
Yes, the Zen does not match the iPod in many respects, but it still plays music and it is a boatload cheaper. However, when two break in such a short period of time, one realizes why it is so much cheaper. I can't recommend this product due to my experience with it.
Rating:
Summary: Does not function correctly, unhelpful customer service
Review: Don't buy this player. I recently bought this after my Archos 20 MultiMedia self-destructed (don't get me started on that piece of junk!) and expected it to be flawless. Unfortunately, after loading 280 + songs, all I get now is "Player either not connected or busy." It will not load any further songs on and customer service has no idea what to do. Don't buy this player.
Rating:
Summary: Large disk space doesn't make up for a shoddy product
Review: I had the 60gb Nomad for about a week. And I've now had the 40gb iPod for about a week. Figured I'd do a comparison. For me, tech doesn't have to be pretty as long as it's functional. And being that I have a 15,000 mp3's (50GB), I went with the Zen first so I could hold all my music on it. I wanted to like the Zen, I really did. Alas... INTERFACE
iPod comes with iTunes, a pretty decent player, great for organizing and tagging your audio files. Works just fine with Windows. Get some Mac reader software, and you've got a device that behaves just like a spare hard drive. Installation was easy and hassle-free. Nomad comes with Creative Media Center, a player that didn't recognize 90% of my music tags... and in fact, erased 90% of my music tags. The Media Center, in fact, was such a resource hog that I uninstalled it, which screwed up my computer even more, requiring me to run a System Restore. Oh, and it crashed a lot. The Zen itself never behaved correctly in my USB 2.0 slot... often just disconnecting at random and cutting off transfers with an "unknown error" message. Gee, how helpful. SIZE iPod is smaller than an audio cassette case. Zen is about the size of a standard walkman. ACCESSORIES The 40GB iPod comes with a case, earphones, a headphone remote extension, iPod dock, firewire cable, a charger, spare foam thingees for the earphones, plastic clips to cover up naked connections, a 4-port firewire adapter, and a little bag to carry the accessories in. The iPod case covers up the screen, which is a bit inconvenient. However, the ipod is easy to remove from the case, but can't fall out on it's own. The belt clip is quite sturdy. The iPod comes with address book support, an alarm clock, a calendar and games... I've also managed to download the weather and the news on it. The Zen comes with a case, earphones which I never really used because they were too big and sounded bad, a USB cable, a charger, and... um... no, that's it. The Zen also comes with a case that covers up the screen, but you can't remove the Zen from it's case without unsnapping it, which (because of the location of the snap) is very hard to do without taking the case off your belt - which is disturbingly easy to do. I never trusted the Zen case enough to use it. And the Zen can't really do anything else but play music - however, it's easier to delete / edit / organize tracks directly from the Zen than with the iPod. Generally, you have to have the iPod plugged into your computer to delete / edit tracks or playlists. SERVICE Turns out the headphones / remote extension that came with my iPod was defective - my left earphone would sputter and go out whenever I just breathed on the wires. I called Apple and got put on hold for a while - but they sent me a replacement that arrived in four days. My Zen wouldn't interact with USB 2.0 correctly, the battery life was about four hours, and in the last couple days that I had it, it seemed that (you guessed it) the headphone jack was giving out. After two e-mails and two phone calls to tech support, Creative finally told me my Zen was defective and sent me over to "Customer Care." "Customer Care" apparently assumes you're a thief, as they won't send you a replacement Zen unless you A) mail it back first, or B) let yourself get charged for it AGAIN, and only get a refund once they receive the defective part, accessories and all. "Customer Care" is also only open during regular business hours, and the "Customer Care" representatives... well, let's just say they don't inspire you with confidence. In fact, they screw stuff up. A lot. Like freezing the price of the Zen on my checking account twice despite the fact that I told them not to. Having to call them four times just to get a UPS label to send the defective Zen back. Oh, and did I mention they lost my returned Zen once it arrived? No, I don't think I did. Oh, and I had to do a Rod Steiger routine on the "Customer Care" guy to get a full refund. I really wanted to recommend the Zen. I really wanted to like the Zen. But it just doesn't compare to the iPod at all. Creative, for that matter, doesn't compare with Apple at all. Apple makes a product that seems to have been tested backwards and forwards in order to provide the end user with the best possible product. Creative makes a product that doesn't live up to any of its hype, and seems slapped together as an afterthough. In fact, thanks to my experience with the Creative's "Customer Care," I'm never buying anything from Creative again. Apple, on the other hand, has guaranteed my future business. Sacrifice the 20gb of extra space and the bit of extra money and get the iPod. The Zen is not worth it. At all.
Rating:
Summary: I don't see what everyone's problem is- I love this player
Review: This is an excellent player, especially for the price, with features that are comparable to and even excel the Ipod. For a price that's still less than even the lowest level Ipod I was able to get this 40GB monster, and the best part is it works as great as it was advertised to and then some. Here are the pros and cons (few there are) in detail: Look/Design: The system is terrific in size and design, IMO looking better than the Ipods. It's bigger, but people have grossly exaggerated the size differences- it's only about half an inch longer and 1/3 inch thicker than the new-generation Ipods. It's very solidly built, and has a nice dense feel to it. I find all of the controls well-placed and not flimsy in the least. The scroll wheel is better than the Ipod's as well, in that you don't risk giving yourself a cramp running your thumb around in circles endlessly- just a small nudge of the finger and you're there. The screen's large and easily read. The only beef I can raise in this regard is the pop-off face, that sometimes comes off a bit easily, but besides that it's perfect. Sound: Exceptional, though I can't really compare it to the Ipod. From what I've heard it's at least equal. Like others have mentioned, you can manage to hear new things in songs even though they're on lower bit levels. There's no so-called background hiss that I've noticed, at least so far. Interface- Practically seamless. Songs are recognized automatically by ID3 tags, which at first I was against since I had organized my files by folder with a previous player from Iriver. Yet after ensuring that all the ID3 tags are in order (with the software which is actually not as bad as people make it out) it actually turns out to be really handy. It's a dedicated music playing device, anyway, so this serves it better. You can find any song quicky by an artist, album, or genre search. Playlists can be generated on the fly (which is a bit clunky but still a really nice bonus) or by using the software, and there are a bevy of EQ options. The only thing missing is an option to adjust the balance. Software: As I mentioned before, the Creative Mediasource software is actually really robust despite what others have said, though Notmad may still work better. It's easy to transfer, preview, and organize files. The in-program ID3 tag editing is a strong point, as well. It was no problem for me to use their software. Some may complain that there's no drag-and-drop capability, but what they should realize is that this is mainly a portable music player, not a computer accessory or hard drive. The software and design are geared towards enhancing the music experience. Overall, I'm giving this 5 stars as I've seen nothing of the problems people have repeatedly cried havoc over, but as I've only had the player for a while I leave room for doubt if the headphone jack, hissing, or scroll wheel problems show up with me too. So far, however, I'm a very happy customer. Please consider this much superior piece of equipment before plopping down half a grand for an Ipod.
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