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Another iPod Competitor
rael9real writes "NOMAD has intoduced a new player. It has USB 2 and FireWire (finally), and supports WMA and MP3. It has a 20GB drive like the high-end iPod, and supposedly holds more music because it supports WMA (though why someone would want to use WMA is beyond me). It *is* cheaper than the iPod, though. Looks like a definite competitor. Maybe it'll drive iPod pricing down." Update: 10/14 21:21 GMT by T : Note that the listed specs for the player mention only "USB," not USB 2.
per Creative, it is $299+s/h after a rebate.
The price info is pretty well buried. Had to "find a retailer" to get it.
guac-foo
Lots of petrified grits
From the add:
"Use your Zen to transfer files from your home computer to work or school by using the Zen as a portable hard drive."
And the price is the same as the IPod after "rebate" read 8 months to get your money.
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
Go read the specifications, it's not listed. Only mp3 and wma are listed.
specs
I have a first generation Nomad Jukebox. There are several newsgroups & websites devoted to hacking these, so I'm assuming that the newer ones will be hackable also.
I love my Nomad, with the exception of it's size (Portable CD player size), slow transfer (USB only) and battery life (About 2 hours), but this new player seems to fix all of those. As soon as it has been out a while and prices drop, I would definately love to have one of these.
Anotherng that will hold the iPod is it's exclisive Macintosh support.
d ex.html
There's an iPod version made specifically for Windows--three of them actually. With a FAT32 file system, Musicmatch 7.1 for access, and even a 6-pin-to-4-pin adapter for the firewire cable.
http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/02q4/021003/in
I've been lurking in various Creative boards, largely because I just bought the Nomad Jukebox 3. Anyway, the general belief is that the Zen is a somewhat stripped down Nomad Jukebox 3. When you think about it, this makes sense.
The Jukebox 3 is a hard drive based MP3 player, just like the iPod. That said, they occupy slightly different niches. The iPod is small and very portable. The Jukebox 3 is bigger, but it has much more battery space, recording capabilities, a wired remote, more disk for the price, etc. There are two different markets here, and Creative wants a piece of the iPod's pie. The Zen appears to be a Jukebox 3 without the extra battery space, without the recording features (expect through its external wired remote), without the docking station port, etc. It's smaller, more portable, and easier to carry than the Jukebox 3. It also does less than the Jukebox 3.
Truthfully, it's a wonderful time to be thinking about an MP3 player (especially hd based). Every possible configuration is out there. On the cheap side, you have Archos with it's video player. Creative has a richly featured (and fairly inexpensive) Jukebox and a less featured, more portable Zen. Apple has a very portable and light iPod that's also more expensive. There's a toy for every price range and feature set!
iPod specs here
Jukebox Zen
specs here
Height: iPod =101.6 mm vs. Zen=112.6
Width: iPod =60.96 mm vs. Zen=75.9
Depth: iPod =21.34 mm vs. Zen=24.5
Weight: iPod =7.2 oz vs. Zen=9.5 oz
Display: iPod=160x128 pix vs. Zen=132x64 pix
Output Power: iPod=60mW vs. Zen=100mW
Playing Time: iPod=10hours vs. Zen=12hours
slogg vorbis is shit. Stop whining about your fucking audio codec that no one will ever fucking suport because no one wants it. MP3 is the standard and ogg will fade away into nothing.
Firstly, how can a codec that's gaining momentum "fade into nothing"? It's not mainstream now, but neither were computers, UNIX, digital audio, etc.
Second, more and more companies are picking up OGG Vorbis support. Why is that? Well, let's see. It's a completely FREE codec that is continually getting better. It's supported by an organization that's dedicated to creating free multimedia codecs for use in open, free, and commercial use -- all without charging a cent. Most importantly, however, OGG Vorbis IS superior to WMA and MP3. If you think otherwise, try looking into some of the various listening tests. Or check out Vorbis' Listen page. If you're such a blind zealot that you won't actually test various codecs, you have no right to praise or flame any codec for any reason.
Grow up and leave the technology details to people who know what they're doing and talking about.
And the price is the same as the IPod after "rebate" read 8 months to get your money.
The 20GB iPod is $499.
The Jukebox Zen 20GB player is $349 before the rebate, and $299 after.
"And like that
Nope, no sig
Ogg sounds better than MP3, yes, but: OGG will continue to improve, while MP3, for all intents and purposes, is effectively DEAD.
Yes, DEAD. The "standard" MP3 is not going to improve. Any attempt to improve it will be NON-standard. MP3Pro isn't MP3. Any 'official' enhancements to MP3 will be like MP3Pro--for profit. The MP3 "game" is up; Fraunhoffer and their ilk won't let the next goose that lays a golden egg get away.
Ogg on the other hand is free to change and evolve on it's own, patent free. Our idiot "MP3 is standard and ogg sucks" troll, obviously, didn't consider this. Nor did he consider the fact that major game companies are now using Ogg Vorbis for music formats (NWN, UT2k3, Serious Sam, etc), and NOT MP3.
Also newsworthy: There is alpha-level Ogg Vorbis support for the PhatNoise/Kenwood Music Keg -now-, downloadable from the PhatNoise web site. Looks like the Music Keg is the first one to market with Ogg! (at least for car players, anyway...)
The iPod uses a 1.8 in. hard disk; the Creative uses a standard 2.5 in. notebook
hard disk -- therefore the Creative player is about twice as big as the iPod.
Not only is this not novel (Archos has been using 2.5 in. notebook
drives in similarly-sized MP3 players for a while), it's also not a competitor
in my book.
Let's not forget that the company that makes this, Creative Labs, hopped on the DRM bandwagon.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
People are complaining about features? The Nomad does have features over and above the iPod. Most notably recording. Many people in the live & location recording circles are exploring the Nomads as a replacement for DAT and Mini Disc recording. Creative engineers have been quite active with end users on some of the message boards I frequent with refining the firmware of the Nomad III to enable bit accurate recording and data transfer, so they will listen to a relatively small customer base to improve their product. That said I think I remember reading an article that discussed why so few portable devices support OGG and other codecs. It basically comes down to CPU power. Most of the embedded chips do not have enough processing power to support OGG decoding. Any device this small makes a tradeoff between battery and processing power. Finally 10-12 hours of nonstop music is a lot, maybe I can't listen to EVERY song on a player in that time, but do you always know what songs you listen to before you leave the house? I don't, so it's nice to have a large selection to choose from. And the ability to recharge from a USB port or an AC adapter sounds pretty nice to me. Competition in this market will drive innovation and lower prices. The iPod and Nomad are both prime examples of that, so let's hope for our sake the battle continues.