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First Portable Media Centers Hit Store Shelves
An anonymous reader writes "After months of speculation and hype, the first Portable Media Center based on Microsoft's 'Windows Mobile software for Portable Media Centers' has finally hit store shelves. The Zen Portable Media Center, from Creative Labs, is now available at Best Buy and Fry's Electronics, priced under $500. That money basically buys a 3.8-inch color LCD screen, ultra-fast USB 2.0 port to transfer video, music, and digital photos from your PC, and an internal 20 GB hard drive."
I have one (don't ask) and I'm really quite impressed with it. While it won't replace my iPod for music use, I really think that the video/tv functionality would be fantastic for someone who commutes to work on a bus or ferry every day.
The UI is clean and easy to use, and the sync works great. I also like that it is easy to configure the system to transcode (in the background) all of your content to lower quality in order to optimize space utilization.
These are actually surprisingly good tools. There's a good review here.
I will say, however, that if I had not gotten one for free (again, don't ask) then I don't think I would have been willing to pay $500 for one. When they either get down into the $350 range, or have MUCH higher capacities at the $500 price point perhaps.
jrjBlog
What manner of DRM has been built in?
I honestly don't understand the reasoning behind these products. These are marketed and designed for use from the point of view people WANT to carry movies and photos around with them. Sucessful portable devices don't get in the way when they are not being AND are so simple to intereact with that one doesn't think about using them.
These look like little more than toys for people who buy things because they are new. Novelty, nothing less, especially at that price, useability, and size.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Dang it, I knew I should have waited on buying the mediocre-speed USB 2.0 port version. Now all my friends will be laughing at me because they have the ultra-fast version.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Microsoft always wants to extend Windows even into areas where it does not belong. A handheld running Windows? What on earth for? Now this too? No thanks. Give me a Palm, give me an iPod, give me a simple tool that works well and elegantly.
A couple of hours ago I exchanged my new fourth generation 40GB iPod for one of these units.
...the unit seems to be dummed down to the point that it doesn't do very much besides play songs and movies. Given that the unit is running Windows CE.NET (v4.2 I think) I expected the unit to be loaded with PIM applications and such. But, there don't seem to be any such applications. The iPod provides such things as tasks, calender and notes viewing applications. I had expected the PMC to be more functional than the iPod, not less.
I loved my iPod, but it was unstable and locked up repeatedly. It was my second such iPod to do so. My first such iPod was one that I had bought only two weeks ago. I exchanged the first iPod for the second iPod because after only one day of use the first iPod had begun locking up. Many thanks to Best Buy for living up to their 30 day return policy.
Anyway, with regard to the Zen PMC, my initial impressions are mixed:
1. The unit is very large and bulky compared to an iPod. In fact, the unit is large enough that you'll have to wear very loose-fitting pants in order to carry the unit in your pocket. And the unit is too heavy to carry in your hand for a long period of time.
2. Installation of the battery is needlessly hazardous to the unit and is needlessly annoying. Before installing the battery, you must adjust a tiny, delicate on/off within the battery compartment to the "on" position using whatever small tool that you might have sitting nearby. If you're not careful you could *easily* break the switch by pushing too hard on it. Also, if you don't have a small tool (e.g. a jeweler's screwdriver) sitting nearby then you're not even going to be able to start using your unit. I was fortunate as after a few minutes of scrounging around I was able to find a jeweler's screwdriver. Had I not found a tool I would have been pretty pissed off. My iPod didn't require any such silliness.
3. The unit's buttons have a cheap feel to them. The "Back" button not only feels cheap, but is too far recessed into the casing to be easily used.
4. The top (user facing) half of the unit is made of glossy black plastic and therefore shows fingerprints a lot. Within a few seconds of being handled the unit no longer looks new.
5. (Completly subjective) The unit completely lacks the sexy, cool appearance of an iPod. If I were a Mac user (I'm a Windows and Linux user), I'd probably say that the PMC is to an iPod as a generic Wintel desktop box is to a Mac G5 desktop box.
6. The directions claim that you should charge the battery for *sixteen* hours before first use. Sixteen hours is a long time to wait before taking a new toy for a walk.
7. The unit's UI is very easy to figure out. Mostly that's because...
8.
9. Windows Media Player 10 is required in order to synchronize the PMC with your PC. Without getting very far at all I got so annoyed with WMP 10 that I decided to post these comments. WMP 10 is bad in several ways. First, WMP 10 is still in beta. That's right. In order to get music onto your new $500 PMC, you're going to have to use beta software. Thanks Microsoft. And this is not just any beta software. This is software that installs a bunch of DRM stuff onto your computer. In fact, there are several steps in the installation procedure where you encounter DRM-related dialog boxes. These dialog boxes explain things such as the fact that the installer connects to Microsoft's servers to register your computer with Microsoft so Microsoft can assign your machine some sort DRM ticket. Depending upon how you feel about DRM, you might not be too happy about any of this.
10. Using WMP 10 to synchronize with the PMC seems to be broken. I keep telling it to synchronize and it keeps pretending that it is, but it isn't. I have about 16GB of songs to synchronize. With my iPod, I had the process of synchronization completed in less than an hour. I just plugged in my iPod to the cradle and everything just worked. With the PMC