I’m very close to purchasing a Nomad Jukebox Zen 20G USB 2.0. Does anyone out there in Internetland have any information about said product they would like to share? Any praise or disses or interesting facts? I’m buying it based on a number of positive reviews I’ve read and the fact that Creative seems to know what they’re doing when it comes to making sound.
Thanks in advance for any responses.
A guy I work with had one and ditched it in favor of the new iPod. I’ve used both, and the iPod is just much better built. It feels higher quality and the menus are much more intuitive. The Zen has a cheap feeling jog dial in place of the iPod’s robust center wheel. That, and the IPod’s much larger user base seem to make it a much better choice than the Zen.
You’re right, the ipod does kick some ass. I looked into the it but it doesn’t really work for me. It’s a heck of a lot more expensive and it’s hard to find because they sell out (I’m limited to one store because I can get a deal through an employee I know). Also, I don’t have a firewire card. The big one is that the ipod can only be hooked up to one unique machine, hence you can’t move files with it. The Zen is not limited in this way.
Ah well, if you’re getting it at discount so it has to be a Zen, go for it. It’s certainly not a bad little device at all, much nicer, IMO, than the flash media players.
I own a Nomad Zen USB 2.0. (or as the gf calls it, the ‘DooDad’) I specifically chose it over the Ipod because of the price and the fact that I didn’t feel like installing firewire on my PC.
I love the thing. It sounds great and it’s easy to use. I like being able to creat playlists on the fly. It has pretty good battery life if you don’t use the special sound effect settings. I don’t usually use the special effects, so I can’t say how much they drain the battery.
The only issue I had with the Zen was that sometimes PlayCenter didn’t see my Zen. I seem to have fixed this by upgrading the Zen and my USB 2.0 card with the lastest drivers as well as patching PlayCenter. (actually, I updating everything on my PC on day, and then noticed the Zen problem had gone away)
In short, I like my Zen. You get good value for your money and the device works well.
(No matter what MP3 player you get, go a head and ditch the included headphones. Go out and get something decent by Koss or Sennheiser. You’ll be glad you did.)
(Oh… If you don’t already do so, better start making proper tags for your MP3’s. You won’t be able to find anything on the Zen without good ID3 tags)
You should ask theios if the nomad zen acts as a drive letter harddrive.
when the zen first came out you could not simply attach the unit via usb to a computer and have it show up as a portable harddrive. You were FORCED to use the creative playcenter software to access the zen. I do not know if that has since changed. Since I dont own one, I’ll have to defer to theios.
I think all American designed MP3 players work that way. It’s a copyright issue - if it showed up as a drive letter, it means you can take it to a friend’s house and copy the contents to his/her PC. To prevent this, they are designed to sync to only one PC using propriatory software. Archos, being a foreign (French?) company, does allow you to access their devices as a drive letter.
Actually the iPod does show up as a drive letter, allowing you to use the device as a removable hard drive. But you can’t transfer MP3 files that way and have it play on the iPod. Only the files transferred using the propriatory software (iTunes or MusicMatch Jukebox) will play on the iPod. The drive letter feature is there so you can use the iPod to carry other types of data files.
By the way, I was told at a store that a USB adapter for the iPod will be coming out later this year. One more reason to choose the iPod. (Or one fewer reason not to choose it, to be more accurate.)
I haven’t really explored that option yet. I’m not interested in loading non-music files on mine, and I rarely need to transfer files now that my entire CD collection is on it.
I know that there are some thrid party programs out there that allow you to access the Zen. The link in my previous post has some info on them. NotMad seems to be the most popular. I think it has an interface that is much like using Windows Explorer.
There are third pary programs for just about every MP3 player. I use one for my little Rio500. The program that came with it was a pain.