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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
...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.
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".
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!!!
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
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!!!
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?
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.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
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.
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
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 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.
Personally, I prefer Ogg Vorbis over MP3 for several reasons.
... And so it comes to this.