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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!!!
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
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!!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You don't think Apple would let this amazing situation they've worked so hard to create slip through their fingers do you?
Apple only has to flip the switch and open Music Store up to other players, formats and DRM, and the game goes on.
But that's just it... that's all Apple has to do. But this is Apple you are talking about. And that's just it. I don't wanna get all about the Apple zealots, but this just comes down to it.... Do you think Apple is gunna just flip the switch, or will this be another case of "We're Apple and we're better than you!" syndrome?
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
This has probably been said before a lot before, but... THIS is a real iPod Killer. Under $20, too.
Go hug some trees.