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60G Nomad Zen vs. The iPod
war3rd writes "According to an article in BetaNews, Creative is going to be releasing an upgraded Nomad Zen at the end of the month that is not only larger than the iPod, but cheaper too. At $400 for 60G ($100 less than the 30G iPod), the new Zen will sport more features, although it may be slightly larger than the newer generation of iPods. I have been putting off buying an MP3 player until I felt that the arms race was settling down, but the new Zen is making my mouth water. So what does the /. community think, are Creative and Apple going to be the top players in this arena? Is it time I jumped onto the bandwagon? One thing is for certain, I am going to be watching the reviews closely."
I've been using a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox 3 (30gb) unit for the last year and 10+ hours a *day* and have no complaints. Solid unit. I can not only play MP3s, but also WMA files (sorry /.-ers,,, I have sinned).
The unit also easily stores data files. w00t!
IMHO, the zen is an easy choice - twice the storage, $100 less, tons of reliability, and more features.
Btw, there is also a HUGE Nomad community too! I'll cite Nomadness.net as a great example. Good forums and good Nomad news.
iPod sports AAC. That's the kicker. I'd rather have quality than quantity. Besides...you really gonna fill that 60Gigs with music? I don't think so.
I got nothin'.
What about us who want a good MP3/OGG player that is under 100bucks?
--sig fault--
is a cheap version of ipod that sports maybe 1GB and has an insanely long battery life. What kind of insane moron needs compressed audio with 60 GB of room.
Maybe the next logical progression would be to sport a small plasma screen and play dvd's and divx. These things already had enough room.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
The iPod has a more ergonomic and intuitive interface.
The iPod has better construction.
The iPod will work with the iTunes Music Store when it comes out for Windows later this year. The Zen won't. What does it work with, WMA's? Yes, for those wonderful WMA music stores that are all the rage nowadays.
The iPod is kicking its ass in the marketplace, and for good reason.
The new iPods have the hardware to record and purportedly will have a microphone coming out in June.
Creative has to be right up there with Microsoft in terms of their consistant and blatant contempt for their own customers.
It's been over two years since Creative bought out Aureal, and they still have neither released a card that supports Aureal's A3D 2.0 standard (still lightyears ahead of any version of EAX), nor open-sourced the drivers for the old Aureal cards.
I can't think of a single hardware company I'd be less likely to give my money to. (What, me bitter about my old Diamond MX300? Why yes.)
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Another option is the Archos Jukebox. The 20GB recorder model is ~$225, and you can upgrade the drive to 60GB.
One of the best things about the Archos is the OSS Rockbox firmware at http://rockbox.haxx.se/. New features are continually being added that make the Archos a very cool device. Plus, if you aren't happy with the way it works, just hack it yourself! The Rockbox source is very well written and easy to hack. Plus it has games.
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You know what's funny is that I was shocked to read above that a top guy at Creative wouldn't know what is up with MPEG-4 and especially AAC, and not even know that everything Apple (Mac OS X, QuickTime, all Mac apps, iPod, iTunes) are all fully MPEG-4 and AAC.
Then the next question the Creative guy goes to is about 48kHz sample rates! The CEO of Creative wants you to use Windows Media and he doesn't even realize that 48kHz is itself like the Windows Media format of the 1980's.
The 48kHz sample rate was chosen by the RIAA for "consumer" digital audio recording (DAT, MiniDisc, Hi8) so as to make it harder to make CD's from those recordings.
The small increase in quality you get by sampling at 48kHz instead of 44.1kHz does not pay for the HUGE decrease in audio quality you get by a Sample Rate Reduction from 48kHz to 44.1kHz. It's more destructive than converting to analog and then back to digital with good converters.
To still be talking 48kHz in 2003 is abysmal. The next rate that's useful above 44.1 is 96kHz, which is high up enough and done at 24-bit or 32-bit and gains you so much quality that you can then come down to 44.1 right at the end and you're better than if you stayed there through the whole process.
Creative's stuff is sub-par. It's good PC gear but it's not good audio gear. iPod is both good PC gear and good audio gear.
In short, iPod and Apple are MUSICAL ALREADY. Creative are not as creative as Apple.
I am seriously considering this one, because of its amazing features though its bigger than the iPod. It has some really cool features like FM radio, recording from radio or any audio source, FM transmitter, recording voice notes, bidirectional "plug'n'sychronize" (to synch your device playlists with your PC and vise versa). The site also says you can record an excerpt of a song (on the radio say..) and identify it later using their PC software. Another really cool thing is the detachable drive, in case you feel you have filled up your drive you can migrate to a bigger one easily or maybe have 2 drives. It also supports playlist editing on the device itself.
Some problems: Supports USB 1.1 (though they say the USB2.0 version is coming in a couple of months), supports only mp3 (but again they say supporting more formats is just a firmware upgrade away). Also support for Linux and OGG is in the pipeline. The best part is however support for developers, who can put in their own customizations.