Creative Zen Micro Ships Today

SpaFF writes "Today Amazon started shipping the shipping the Zen Micro, Creative's answer to the Ipod-mini and one of several touted 'ipod-killers' due out for the holiday season. Sporting 5GB of space, a form-factor similar to the Ipod-mini, built-in FM radio, and a REMOVABLE battery, the Zen Micro looks quite promising. Does anyone know if this thing will work with Linux?"

Comments

One of the reasons

[Pacifix]

that iPods are so powerful is that it's coupled with the Apple music store. The seamless intergration between reasonable prices and DMR and synching with the iPod is hard to beat. Do any of the new iPod killers have comparable connections to music management software/store? My old MP3 player required MusicMatch, which sucked.

It's kind of ugly..

[mrseigen]

Not as bad as the mini Dell DJ, but part of the appeal of the iPod is, the simple and minimal appearance. This thing looks like a sci-fi explosion, like most MP3 players these days.

The battery life is a bit worse, too.

What's up with the ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

First it was all the viral marketing. Now we're just getting straight up ads? With referral links to benefit the poster? What happened Slashdot?

Re:OggVorbis Support?

[garcia]

More importantly, does it work with OggVorbis? Apparently not. :-(

Why is everyone so excited about OGG? Just because it's free? I have never (and likely will never) use OGG but I don't see why every player that is mentioned on Slashdot has to have several comments modded up that mentions the inclusion or lack of OGG support.

Convert the OGG to MP3 or to some other format that the player uses and be done with it. I just can't believe that because the player is missing a basically unused format (for the non-geeks) that it is somehow "bad".

Library Considerations

[mudpyr8]

All these different portable players are great, but how do we deal with our libraries? My library is fully managed by iTunes, but is primarily MP3 (I don't import using AAC).

If each of these comes out expecting people to use their software, how is that good? With 30GB of music its worth it to me to NOT mess with moving my library to another software package.

I think choice is great, and I think this looks like a snazzy product, but I think companies have to consider the inertia involved with moving a library, especially if the expectation is to convert it to a new format. What is that worth, and does Apple offer an SDK for iTunes?

Re:iPod killer?

[Rude Turnip]

This is made to compete with the iPod Mini, which only has 4Gb of storage space...so it's actually larger in terms of storage space. Both products cost $250 and come in similar sizes.

iPod killer?

[twbecker]

I for one am tired of the pharse "iPod killer". The iPod is entrenched to the point that it is going to take more than a superior product to unseat it. It's going to take a strong marketing campaign, and tight integration with a popular download service. I can't speak to the latter (since I own an iPod and use the iTMS), but I do know that I don't recall ever seeing a TV commercial or even many print ads for a non iPod music player.

The good thing about Apples store

[shaka999]

Is that you can rip out the DRM. I refuse to buy anything that has DRM such that if the company goes under I'm stuck.

I already had one machine die and when I contacted Apple to have it removed they made it sound like it was a big deal to take it off my approved list. Just imagine what will happen in 10 years when this technology is old. Whats going to happen? Will Apple be around?

Getting sick of the term "iPod killers"

[PornMaster]

Every "iPod killer" has ended up in a ditch at the side of the road. Incremental feature advances just aren't going to do it. The iPod family are a de facto standard, and while some people might get individually excited about another player, whether a Rio, Creative, or Sony, the fact that everything is being compared to the iPod means that Apple is the one who sets the tone, sets the mindshare standard, and racks up the sales.

Something would have to have twice the features at half the price with considerably more 'style' to "kill" the iPod. Everything out there now maxxes out at kicking iPod's shins.

Spec comparison

[jdreed1024]

It seems like this might be the first time that something being plugged as an "iPod killer" might actually compete with the iPod Mini (as in get a noticeable amount of market share, there are plenty of other devices that 'compete'). It's about the same size (0.2" thicker, and 0.3" shorter than the iPod Mini), which is nicely done. And it does have that extra 1GB of space. And comes in shiny colors. However, I can think of two things that could kill this device:

• Interface: Apple's 'click wheel' is great, and very compact. If there's one thing they get right, it's human interface (well except for those god-awful early iMac mice) This has buttons, and from what I can tell, has ridges between the buttons, meaning your finger doesn't move seamlessly over the interface. This may seem like a nitpick, but it's not when you're manipulating it in your pocket. Apple's click wheel also has a concept of speed. When you're scrolling through an audiobook, if you run your finger around the wheel slowly, it moves slowly, if you run it fast, you can skip through hours of the book at a time. (Useful if you lost your place, or accidentally hit the "|
• Doesn't play iTMS or Audible (.aa) tracks. Yes, we know Apple's not licensing iTMS widely - I'm not blaming Creative for omitting this feature. But iTMS *is* the dominant legal music download store at the moment, and that alone may push people towards an iPod Mini instead of this). It also appears to not play Audible audiobooks (though I may be missing some specs, since Creative's MuVo does play them).

But all in all, looks to be a very nice device - let's see what the general public thinks.

Re:OggVorbis Support?

[garcia]

It doesn't really matter if you understand why all us crazy geeks like ogg, but if you're a company making portable music devices and want our business, you damn well better know that we do in fact want it.

See, that's the problem. I don't use OGG because it's a worthless format (the same with MP3, etc). I perfer SHN/FLAC. Do I complain that very few players support SHN/FLAC playback? No. Is it my #1 priority when I am looking for a portable music device? No.

Covert between the two.

You can't have all the formats you want and inexpensive pricing. It just doesn't work like that.

Removable battery? Big deal.

[fingon]

I think it took me all of 10 minutes to change battery in my ipod, using just tools included within replacement kit (from Other World Computing IIRC).

And if I didn't want to do it myself, Apple would've done it happily enough (but would have charged twice as much for bit less powerful battery.. but I digress).

Re:Linux support? Uhhh... RTFM?

[thunderbee]

If it's seen as a dumb USB storage, il will work on linux, regardless of the requirements.
My Finepix camera requires some version of windows, and nevertheless works like a charm with linux out of the box.

So I believe the question stands.

Re:OggVorbis Support?

[kwalker]

Personally, I prefer Ogg Vorbis over MP3 for several reasons.

1. Bit for bit, it sounds better so I have a choice of the same sound quality for a lower bitrate (More songs per MB on my flash-based player) or better sound quality. Its psycho-acoustic model beats the pants off of MP3. Yeah, it's not lossless like FLAC is, but I can detect no audible artifacts no matter what system I play it through.
2. It isn't locked down, patented, proprietary, or otherwise encumbered. It doesn't live or die with the whims of its parent company. It is free for anyone to use (BSD-licensed) and I'm not required by law to tip the parent company anything per rip I make. It's fully documented with reference code available for just about everything capable of processing a digital data stream.
3. It is flexible and powerful. It supports arbitrary data encoded into the stream so things like lyrics, URLs, album art, etc. can be encoded into the stream, and anything that can play Ogg can understand them. Bitrates can go from 0 (silence) to over 300. Compare that with MP3 players that show unusually long play times for files with ID3v2 tags at the beginning and play garbage sound for the first second or so as it spins through the album art, or those that play silence as the song flies by at 5x normal speed.

Re:OggVorbis Support?

[stuuf]

The difference between geeks and non-geeks is that the non-geeks will just use stuff that's more popular (iPod, MP3) but geeks actually car about which product is better. Most of the people pleading for Vorbis* support are probably doing so because it sounds better than MP3, especially at low bitrates, which is useful on portable devices.