Rating: 
Summary: Great Product!
Review: I've been using the Zen 2.0 for about two weeks now and really love it. The sound quality is excellent and anyone who is barely tech-savy can learn how to use it under an hour. I recommend it highly. For the price I think it beats the iPod hands down. It is a bit larger and has a smaller screen, but it sounds better and has lots more features. Here are a couple pointers that will enhance your use of the product: 1. Ditch the headphones that come with the unit. They make sound, but that's about the best I can say about them. Instead, buy a pair of Sennheiser MX 500 ear buds or Koss Portapro headphones. Either will work quite well with the Zen - they are reasonably priced and will let you experience fully the sound quality this device is capable of producing. 2. Creative Playcenter, the software that comes with the Zen, is an acceptable program and can rip CD's directly for transfer to the unit. Others have more complaints about it than I do. However, I highly recommend getting Notmad Explorer, a software interface for the Zen made by Red Chair Software. It is reasonably priced, and operates just like Windows Explorer - the Zen appears like a drive and you can add and move files around by dragging and dropping. It also has advance tag editing features other helpful utilities. All in all, I'm very happy with my purchase.
Rating: 
Summary: Small, reliable, well priced, what more is needed?
Review: I bought the ZEN player after looking around at the Ipod, Ipod clones, and other MP3 jukebox players. The ZEN seems to have the right combination of sound quality, small size, reliability, and features. Easy to set up and to load your library. The software is OK, not as bad as described by some customers. The charging from USB is a great feature as it means one less power adapter block to lug around. You could pay a lot more, and probably get a slightly better player, you can pay less and get something substandard, but my recommendation would be CL ZEN Nomad.
Rating:
Summary: iPod? I don't think so!
Review: I just bought a new Jukebox Zen 2.0. already I love it. I had an old first generation Jukebox with the 6 gig HD. My only complaint is that the line in has been taken out. The optional FM/microphone module has a built in mic, so you can't connect any external devices like a tape player to record my old tape to mp3's. other than that I love the 14 hour Lithium Ion battery. and all for about [$...] yesterday. my only question is.... why are iPod's so ... expensive? sure you might want to use FireWire, but I opted for the longer battery life. besides USB 2.0 will be nicer than USB 1.1 was like I was used to. Enjoy coke-a-cola.... opps. wait I mean enjoy your music... no matter what you listen to it on.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not great
Review: Pluses: It definitely has a large capacity, and it has universal connections. Also the EAX can be both a plus and a minus as it drains battery life, but it it can aid in the experience. It is an awesome player though. Sound quality is superb Minuses: Software is buggy, player is a little large, i have large hands so it was ok, but my friend could barely grasp it. Its proprietary connection requires u to carry around a floppy disk and install programs so you can use it as a portable hard drive, which kind of defeats the purpose of being portable. And it came with an AOL cd, which immediately turned me off. ALso the remote for it [costs extra.] Overall the mp3 playing aspect of it is superb, while the computer interface is sketchy at best, and the HDD aspect is only productive for personal use as an extra HDD for your computer, but not for file sharing purposes.
Rating:
Summary: 90% Perfect...too bad about the other 10%
Review: This device is awesome...great capacity and a great price .... The interface is easy to use on the player itself--I really didn't need to read any instructions. It's got enough features to be useful without being overwhelming. And the capacity is perfect--I can't imaging needing much more than this. Of course when compared to the iPod it's a great bargain--almost half the price of the 20GB iPod. THE BLACK EYE: Creative has provided some extremely horrible software to use with this otherwise excellent device. I read the reviews before I bought this thing so I knew what to expect. Most of us music lovers have our files on our PC just how we want them (that's why I like XP--it has cool folders and orginization for My Music)...but all that gets ruined with this software. For crying out loud, you can't drag and drop folders?!?! How counter-intuative is that? You have to each folder, click "select all" and hit transfer. Horrible! And some of my ID tags aren't too perfect so since the files aren't represented in their folders, some of the songs are hard to find (for instance: I know an MP3 named xxxxx.mp3 is actually artist yyyyy. However the Creative software will require me to rename it or something so I can find it on the Zen itself--if I were able to just drag the entire folder over, this wouldn't be a problem as I'd know where to look for file xxxx.mp3). For this reason it has taken me quite a while to get my Zen to reasonably replicate my PC collection of songs.
Also there were a couple of instances where I had to reset the unit using a paperclip, but that happens a lot with PDA's and stuff so I'm not too worried about it. Bottom line: Get the Zen, but be prepared to work a little to get your files onto it.
Rating:
Summary: Awsome!!
Review: This is one of the best purchases I've ever made. 20 Gigs of pure music. Sound is great, headphones could be better. The design of the head phones makes the top of your ear hurt because the arm presses against top of your ear. I would recommend tossing the head phones and buying some good ones. About the 20Gigs, people have put in 60Gig hard drives and it works fine. Have Fun!!!
Rating:
Summary: iWhat?
Review: In my opinion I could not see spending over {money} on the 10GB iPod, when you can get a much better product. The Zen allows you to create playlists while playing a track, I cannot believe that Apple missed that! The USB 2.0 has lightning fast transfers and the standard software was not as bad as some people have said. The Nomad Explorer is alot better and only costs {money. Even figuring in this price still keeps it under {money}.
I read that someone was complaning about this unit not having a stop button, when the pause button does the same thing.
If you are looking for a great portable player/hard drive, get the Zen you will not be disappointed.
...!!
Rating:
Summary: [Great price] for a 20g mp3 player with great sound quality!
Review: REVIEW the tutorial that came with it (takes less than 30mins to go through it all)! This will save you from mino annoyances over how to create playlists or delete songs in Zen or how to use the softwares that come with it. Once you go through the tutorial, you'll have no problem using them. ... Menu screen is small but shows the essential information. As for the buttons, once I got used to the layout after a few hours of use, they are not so bad. My unit did have a hickup; buttons stop function although music kept playing. I had to reset it and everything was fine. ... Sound quality is awesome! Great bass and loud enough volume to blow out your eardrums. If you've waiting for a portable(hold it in your hand) mp3 player with great sound quality that will hold your entire music collection for [a great price], Zen is it!
Rating:
Summary: BEST BUY OUT THERE
Review: I was looking around for a MP3 player for a long time, I was tihnking of gettin the 5gb Ipod but they stopped making them. Then I considered 10gb Ipod, but this gives u as much space as the 500$ Ipod but for like 300$. Why Spend all the money for sometihng like the Ipod when The Zen is just a better buy. I recoment it.
Rating:
Summary: Great Device, even with Creative's Crippling Features
Review: I have a 30gb portable hard drive. I used it for everying, including transporting my mp3 collection from home to work and back. After filling it up a number of times, I decided that I needed to look at getting some additional storage space. I was very excited when I found out about the USB 2.0 version of the Zen coming out and as soon as I saved up the money for it I picked it up. Out of the box it was everything I expected, the menu navigation, the play options, playlists, etc. It wasn't until I connected it to the computer that I realized it wasn't as functional as I had hoped. The drive, which it is in fact a portable hard dive, does not mount as such. It mounts as an arbitrary USB device which means you can't plug it into any random computer and transfer files. You need to carry your drivers and the proprietary Creative file transfer software on a floppy disk (A FLOPPY!!!). Also, Creative PlayCenter is extremely bloated and unwieldy. The first thing I did after installing and playing with it for a bit was go out and download a program called "Notmad" that performs all the functions of PlayCenter in a much more streamlined methond (you still can't transfer files from other computers without installing Notmad or the Creative File Transfer program, though). The thing I wanted the Nomad for most was, as I said before, carrying my MP3s from home to work and back. Well, the PlayCenter doesn't play tracks from the Nomad through the computer, at all. Notmad fixes this too by allowing you to play Nomad tracks though a number of different media players. All in all, the Nomad is a great device for almost half the cost of the iPod. Figure out how to overcome it's crippling features and you've got an excellent and efficient device!
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