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Creative Zen Micro Ships Today

Posted by michael on from the rock-garden-optional dept.

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?"

3 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. Re:iPod killer? by mccalli · · Score: 5, Interesting
    So it's an iPod killer with, at most, one-third the storage space.

    iPod Mini killer. Minis have 4Gig, this has 5Gig.

    I have an original iPod, the 5Gig model. At the time, it was sold as 1000 songs in your pocket. I can't help noticing that this same device is advertising 2,500 songs. So, err...bit rate? I think they're claiming a little too much for themselves.

    To be fair, at 128kbps MP3 VBR I got more than 1k tracks on mine. But the 1k is realistic if you use 192 MP3 or AAC at 160.

    The Zen thing looks ugly, but it does have an FM radio. I do wish Apple would do that instead of mucking about with photos. It's an audio device first - please concentrate on the audio.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  2. Re:One of the reasons by hackstraw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The seamless intergration between reasonable prices and DMR and synching with the iPod is hard to beat.

    iPod owners must be very wealthy. From the iTunes store it would cost on order of $1,000 to fill up an iPod mini, $5,000 and $10,000 for the iPod 20 and 40 giggers respectively.

  3. No thanks.... by Monf · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I bought a Nomad Jukebox Zen NX 20 GB Digital Audio Player last Xmas, and the hard drive in it crashed while my kid was flying back to his mom's.

    I checked the FAQ's they had at Creative, and one of the questions was: Can I jog with my Nomad?, and the answer was: No, but you can take long leisurely walks with it.....

    So I got an iPod instead, and except for Job's habit of keeping everything a secret: like the DRM (which Real reversed-engineered - thank god for sleazy companies...), I'm pretty happy with it.

    I know this is going up against the mini-pod, but if this thing is as FRAGILE as the older disk based nomads, i'd stay away... Besides, you can get a a set of headphones with a built-in fm radio for like a buck -http://www.wholesaledirectonline.com/ec215.html uhoh- this poor guys gonna get /.ed now...

    --
    Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.