Think I can do that: I got a Creative Zen at Christmas, and it's lovely. Battery life is good (I think it's quoted as up to 18 hours), sound quality is also good (well it is made by people that specialise in that sort of thing). It plays common-or-garden mp3s, and the ripping software that comes with it works well. Not sure about playlists and such- I tend to either listen to albums, or just let it browse round my entire collection at random (and hit the forward button if it comes up with something I don't like), but I assume they work. It's also got a couple of fun features, such as the ability to change the speed tracks play at without messing up the pitch (the Creaming Jesus version of 'A Forest' at 150% speed is mighty fun...), and it's got disk space for an awful lot of stuff (mine's currently got ~4000 tracks on it, backups of my Zim collection and a fair chunk of season 3 of 24, and a few other bits and bobs, and it's still less than half full). For in-car use (on the rare occasions I drive a car), I got one of those tape deck converter widgets, so when driving anywhere I can just hook it up and not worry about anything for the rest of the journey. Searching really hard, the only things I can think of that make it slightly less than perfect are 1) The driver software isn't Microsoft certified, so XP whines when you install it. Seems to work perfectly though, and 2) Windows can't talk to it directly as a removeable hard drive, so you can't just plug it into any computer and grep stuff off it. The software does come with an explorer type app that you can use though, so that's only a problem if you need to plug it into any computer without putting the driver software on. All in all, I'd deeply recommend it. Some might say it's not as cute as an IPod, but I actually quite like its look (it matches my Palm Pilot case), and you can laugh at them for getting something that costs more and doesn't sound as good...
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Oooh, wow, you guys won't like the new Ipod Killer, then
Date: 2004-07-14 05:48 pm (UTC)Not sure about playlists and such- I tend to either listen to albums, or just let it browse round my entire collection at random (and hit the forward button if it comes up with something I don't like), but I assume they work.
It's also got a couple of fun features, such as the ability to change the speed tracks play at without messing up the pitch (the Creaming Jesus version of 'A Forest' at 150% speed is mighty fun...), and it's got disk space for an awful lot of stuff (mine's currently got ~4000 tracks on it, backups of my Zim collection and a fair chunk of season 3 of 24, and a few other bits and bobs, and it's still less than half full).
For in-car use (on the rare occasions I drive a car), I got one of those tape deck converter widgets, so when driving anywhere I can just hook it up and not worry about anything for the rest of the journey.
Searching really hard, the only things I can think of that make it slightly less than perfect are 1) The driver software isn't Microsoft certified, so XP whines when you install it. Seems to work perfectly though, and 2) Windows can't talk to it directly as a removeable hard drive, so you can't just plug it into any computer and grep stuff off it. The software does come with an explorer type app that you can use though, so that's only a problem if you need to plug it into any computer without putting the driver software on.
All in all, I'd deeply recommend it. Some might say it's not as cute as an IPod, but I actually quite like its look (it matches my Palm Pilot case), and you can laugh at them for getting something that costs more and doesn't sound as good...