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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?"
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.
I am completely mesmerized by the mesmerizing blue backlight glow.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
More importantly, does it work with OggVorbis? Apparently not. :-(
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
...at PCMag
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.
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?
Yes I know it's not the same product. :)
I do want to report that my Nomad Zen Xtra Jukebox works great with Linux if you use the the gnomad2 program.
Gnomad might work just as well with this product.
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?
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.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
None of Creative's players work well (or much at all) with Linux. Over the years, there have been a couple of OSS attempts, but none with the help of the folks at Creative.
My emailed pleadings/complaints to Creative have always been answered with something to the effect of "We don't support Linux, we don't care to put in the resources, and we won't share the inner workings with you. Thanks for considering our product."
Needless to say, I no longer consider them a company worth supporting.
'ARRGH! Pirate Designers of the Internet, we be!'
you forgot the most important part, at least to quasi-musicians like myself who are looking for an easy way to record band practices without having to set up my laptop- line-in recording! unlike the ipod's intentionally crippled recording features, the zen micro looks like it will record to any bitrate of mp3. i know people who are still buying minidisc recorders for this purpose at well over $200 / pop-- with the zen micro 512MB costing around $120 (last I checked) I am SERIOUSLY tempted to pick one up even though I already own a 40GB ipod!
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
REMOVABLE, rechargable battery.
It'd be cool to have two batteries on a long bike trip and just be able to pop in a fresh one when the first one died.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
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 problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
To put my comment into perspective.
The current age of portable music devices and Apple's position at the moment resembles the early Windows age and PCs.
Apple had the best goods and they got stomped in the end. They got stomped because the other guys were available in more configurations, better pricing, and had greater overall compatibilities.
I use an iPod and I have spent a good share of money on iTMS but to discount new players because they cannot use iTMS isn't fair let alone brite.
What keeps me using my iPod is the fact it is very easy to use as a hard drive (3rd gen here). Now comes a player with features many of the iPod owners have been asking for and what do people do? Dis it for not being an iPod.
Well damn, I would have much prefered a swappable battery or FM over the ability to show pictures. If I want to view my pictures on a teeny tiny screen I would leave them on the camera.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think the Creative player's battery is "removable" in the sense that you just pop a little cover open and the battery comes out. The iPod battery is "removable" in the same sense that my internal organs are "removable."
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Comapred to the Ipod mini it looks like a $5 calculator.
The buttons look like they are those nasty indented clicky bubbles under sticky-back plastic that were all the rage about 10 years ago, and the display looks very basic and uninspired.
The form-factor looks more bulky too.
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?
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
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.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Anyone else find it slightly ironic that the claimed number of songs that 5GB of storage can hold is growing? For instance, the Zen Micro claims to hold 2,500 songs on its drive. However, wasn't the original 5 gig iPod advertised as being able to hold "1000 songs in your pocket"? Is 5 gigs of capacity growing, or are our standards for music quality shrinking?
But all in all, looks to be a very nice device - let's see what the general public thinks.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I purchased a Nomad Jukebox back in the day (6GB), the Nomad requried a proprietary software to copy songs to the device. I lost the CD with the software on it, Creative does not offer a downloadable version of the software on their website. Contacting customer support does not help either as they will not send you the software.
I now have a $300 paperweight. Maybe their practices have changed, but the experience has burned me badly. I will never purchase Creative again. I highly suggest to anyone considering their new product (or any product of theirs for that matter) that you make sure you can get into the device without proprietary software before making a purchase.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
Does anyone know if this thing will work with Linux? But can it run Half-Life 2?
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).
-- pending
"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."
Yes, it's the bit rate. According to the article:
"2500 songs at 64kbps WMA. 1250 songs at 128kbps MP3. 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Available capacity will be less. Reported capacity will vary."
I think 2500 songs isn't enough. Encode them at 32kbps and get 5000. Better yet, encode them at 16kbps and get 10000! Or, if you want to be extreme, encode them at 1kbps and get 160,000 songs on your device! Wow!
They have all the older versions of the Creative software, back to Playcenter 2.x, drivers, and lots of other goodies.
And FWIW, I would suspect the new player will work with Gnomad, the free Nomad software for Linux.
Unless you were just wanting to rant on Creative for a while...
No sig, sorry.
Why would you pay $250 for this? I paid $230 for my Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Extra, which has 6 times the storage space.
But it doesn't have a camera! I thought every audio device had to have a camera? or at least a battery-devouring, expensive color display?
See what I've been reading.
I am waiting for a company to have the balls to make a mp3 or ogg or other replacement for my Sony Minidisc recorder or my Sony portable DAT recorder.
I have been through 3 minidisc recorders they can not be beat for ultra portable and covert recording.
Example, I recorded the Tragically Hip concert last holloween. (Yes it was allowed, hell people had camcorders and SLR cameras) and produced a live recording that is 20 times better than anything I could buy. I also record ambient things. The last Michigan/MSU game gave me phenominal crowd recordings.
Why doesn anyone make an iPOD type device that will record in STEREO with manual level adjustment and both line in and mic in?
THAT would be an Ipod Killer.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I read... The mini-organizer consists of a calendar, an address book and a to-do-list (4)... which is cool!
Then down at the bottom I read... (4) Requires Microsoft Outlook.
Really nice of them to make it require something like MS LookOut. This is one of those rare situations where I'd actaully prefer some 3rd party application. Most people will have it plugged in when they check mail so it'll recharge. Next we'll have yet another outlook virus, but this one uploads 100's Gwar MP3's.
Please mod the parent down, it's a troll.
I recently got a Creative Zen Touch (a present from my company; if I had to choose it'd be an iPod), and I've already spent an unsuccesfull day getting it to work under linux. There is no way that you would mount this device, since it is NOT an USB mass storage device but uses proprietary Creative protocols.
There is one open-source project (Gnomad2) that claims to do the job, but I haven't been able to get that working. If I had the C skills and the time, I would try writing a LUFS plugin. For now, I'm pondering buying an USB2 card, because gnomad2 refuses to work with usb1.1 it seems.
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
Zen microchips, eh?
A monk asked Chao-chou, "Does the microchip have a buddha nature or not?"
Chao-Chou said, "Mu."
"Now we're getting to Science -- I love this!" -- Dr. Steven Chu, Energy Secretary confirmation hearings.
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.
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
If you're like me, you've purchased over 100 of them, despite the fact that they cost >$10 each. I didn't buy them all at once, but if you look at the aggregate cost, it is pretty staggering.
Anyway, we have a 5G iPod from the first batch Apple released, and it's mostly full of dharma teachings, with a few albums, most of which I ripped from my CD collection. So it's actually pretty easy to fill these things up. I don't know how many people are using them to store Dharma teachings, but I can say that in my Dharma group there are a *ton* of iPods, despite the fact that most of us aren't exactly rolling in it.
Seamless integration?
Have a look here at the compatible music stores. It is drag and drop comptible with Windows Explorer and is Microsoft "Plays For Sure" compatible.
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.
I have bought their earlier mp3 players, speakers and other products. All of these products had one thing in common. They were of extremely poor quality. The batteries on my 6GB Nomad Jukebox lasted what seemed like 20 minutes. When you were playing music scrolling around the menus became painfully slow. Their speakers make hissy noises when powered and not connected to anything. Their software is clunky at best. I am never ever buying another Creative product.
whatever the iPod is, it isn't ugly. Design goes a long way toward selling just about everything apple makes. maybe these other companies should think about hiring some decent industrial designers.
Just giving you my personal experience, I've had my iPod for about a year now and have not noticed the battery time being any less than about 5 hours. This doesn't really matter though, because it's rare that I listen to my iPod for 5 hours straight and then don't get a chance to charge it.
I can understand your concerns, but it's really not the huge issue it's made out to be unless you think you're going to use it for 4+ hours at a time without a charge.
The problem that rivals are having is that whilst they can easily make a product that is technically superior, they can't make a product that is asthetically superior.
All the "iPod killers" i've seen look cheap, nasty and feel it too. Maybe if they stopped concentrating on bundling niche features and geting their price as low as possible and looked to using quality materials and a good design then people will buy it. Apple has clearly shown that people are prepared to pay more for something that looks it.
Finally, Sony got it almost right. Their HD based MP3 players look asthetically very good. It's a pity they then threw that all away by not making it support MP3 and only having 20 gig.
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The early adopters had two ways to fill up their iPods:
p2p networks
CD collections
If you had 100 CDs, and 14 tracks a CD, and 1mb per minute, and about 3 minutes per song, so 3mb per track, or 42mb per CD, they would have roughly 4200mb of music.
That also translates to at $12 per CD, $1,200 of music. Not so far off from your iPod mini calculation.
If they bought all their CDs brand new at $19 a cd, that's $1,900 of music.
If they had 200 CDs...
Or compilations...
See, iPods are dirt cheap compared to music. Some people, they have hundreds of gbs of legit music. Imagine someone who bought 5 CDs a month for 10 years; that's 60 CDs a year, or 600 CDs in 10 years. If 100CDs is 4gb, then 600 CDs is 24gb easily. And if you bought more than 5CDs a year... well, the cost of an MP3 player doesn't really amount to much at all.
GPL Deconstructed
I wondered that too, and went with the iAudio M3 instead. It's usable as a removable USB storage device (no drivers needed for Win/Lin/Mac), comes with MP3, WMA, Ogg and FLAC support. Oh, and 40GB in a slim pack that looks better than the iPod. Works like a charm for me.
L-ViS
...since my Nomad IIc died, and I discovered that it only came with a 3 month warantee, and it had only been (lightly) used for under a year. I might try another cheapo brand, but that's it for Creative in my book. You'd hope that a solid state device might last a bit longer than a cassette walkman, but I still have a late 80's boodoo kahn that's going strong. I'd like an iPod, but I really can't justify the price.
This has probably been said before a lot before, but... THIS is a real iPod Killer. Under $20, too.
Go hug some trees.
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For everyone who is into Ogg and wants it to be included in a MP3 player I just want to ask a few questions.
Ogg is under continuous development where they go on a quality system and as they compress better and better the files of the same quality get smaller.
If this is true then if a player supported Ogg format would it need an upgrade to play an Ogg file created 2 years from now?
I'm just curious if this is true since I'm looking to rip my CDs but I'm not sure what to rip them to.
Here's the problem with that. Apple gives you files that have been compressed with a lossy compression method. When you burn the files to CD-R and then later rerip them (to say MP3) you end up adding more digital artifacts and losing more data. You don't end up with the same quality as the file you originally downloaded.