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http://www.macnn.com/articles/02/10/14/nomad.jukebox/

NOMAD Jukebox Zen: new portable MP3 player

updated 08:50 am EDT, Mon October 14, 2002

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Creative today announced the NOMAD Jukebox Zen, a pocket-sized hard drive MP3 player with both USB and FireWire connectivity that the company positions against the iPod. It holds up to 8,000 songs by supporting both MP3 and Microsoft WMA formats: "Compared to the 20GB Apple iPod, which only stores approximately 5,200 MP3 songs, the NOMAD Jukebox Zen can store up to 60% more songs and is priced 40% less. The NOMAD Jukebox Zen is now shipping at only US$299 after a $50 mail-in rebate." It features an anodized aluminum case, stylish carrying case with belt loop, a 12-hour battery, both data/music storage options, and a "scroller wheel" for song navigation.

by MacNN Staff

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10/14, 09:07am | report spam | close Reply |
Power probs.

And here is the fatal flaw: Power DC in 5V. When are they going to realize that people don't want to charge their batteries with another cable, transformer, etc. Ipod has nothing to carry around but a FWire cable.

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10/14, 09:09am | report spam | close Reply |
thats such a stupid claim

ya. it can hold 60% more songs when you code them at 80kbps. "lets attract the stupid people with a moronic claim".

in other news, $299 vs $499 for the iPod? hmm. it weighs 3 ounces more, i didnt bother to figure out the metric conversion but imagine its about the same size. similar battery life. firewire. doesnt sound too bad to me. surely sounds better than that rio riot thing they were saying was an "ipod killer" a few months back.

-scaught

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10/14, 09:16am | report spam | close Reply |
Mac compatible?

Doesn't mention iTunes anywhere...

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10/14, 09:17am | report spam | close Reply |
no Mac support though....

I looked all through the specs and requirements and I don't see anywhere that it lists Mac support with iTunes. Winblows in the only thing mentioned.... :(

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10/14, 09:42am | report spam | close Reply |
Yea, and

isn't it hard to position a product against a competing one when one supports one platform, and the other supports two? Is there any reason on a U.S. website to give dimensions only in mm? Other than I guess to make comparisons more difficult...

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10/14, 09:43am | report spam | close Reply |
Correction....

60% more of a pain with a separate charger, and 40% less stylish. It looks like a raw hard drive.

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10/14, 09:50am | report spam | close Reply |
That thing is much bigger

What they didn't say is it's much bigger than iPod .. look at the dimension ....

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10/14, 09:54am | report spam | close Reply |
That thing is much bigger

What they didn't say is it's much bigger than iPod .. look at the dimension ....

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10/14, 09:59am | report spam | close Reply |
Size of Ipod in mm

iPod
W: 61.0 mm
H: 101.6 mm
D: 21.3 mm
Volume = 132.0 cm3
Zen
W: 75.9 mm
H: 112.6 mm
D: 24.5 mm
volume = 209.4 cm3

The Zen is also therefore 58.6% bulkier than the iPod and that's something they do not advertise. The Sceen is also bigger on the iPod: 160 x 128 pixels vs. 132 x 64 pixels...

Mac support would be cool though as it would give another alternive to people who would like something cheaper... cause, c'mon, 500$ for a mp3 player!!!

cheers :)

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10/14, 10:12am | report spam | close Reply |
wheres skip?

no mention about the skip protection, no buffer?

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10/14, 10:28am | report spam | close Reply |
DRM anyone

In adition to listening to more songs at a S***** bit-rate you can also use microsofts DRMenabled WMA files!

OH JOY! where do i sign up, i can hardly wait to use a media format from a company bent on destroying standards that don't directly equal a profit for them.

bollocks on this trash. my 20gig iPod is still the nevy of every knock off electronics maker in the world.

where's eDigital?

jimothy
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10/14, 11:05am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: where's skip

It says it has 16MB SDRAM. That'll give it perfectly adequate skip protection, even though it is not mentioned explicitly.

A word to their marketing department: On the Features page, it says, "Powerful, simplistic icon-driven interface..." "Simplistic" is generally not a flattering word, and rather contradicts "powerful." "Simple" would have a much more positive connotation.

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10/14, 11:17am | report spam | close Reply |
Why is this on here?

Why is this even posted on this site or being discussed when the specs do not mention any type of Mac or iTunes compatibility?

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10/14, 11:25am | report spam | close Reply |
close, but...

no cigar.. I will say that the Zen isn't as bad as some MP3 players have been in the past, but it's not an iPod killer yet. No calendars, no address book, and it's bigger. Of course it's cheaper! So is my 3.5" HD in my G4 here, big deal..

that said, Apple should announce AAC playback in iTunes and the iPod, as well as the ability to program a playlist on the iPod.., to widen the gap a little more again.

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10/14, 11:49am | report spam | close Reply |
Bad copy cat...

The thing with the playlist is trick... Nomad always fail to make playlists for the portable mp3 players. And no auto DJ mod anywhere... THEY DON 'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO COPY iPod...

chas_m
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10/14, 12:31pm | report spam | close Reply |
Nice try, but no cigar

I'm all for competition, and you gotta give Nomad credit for a) trying and b) bringing it in for considerably less $$ than the 20GB iPod, BUT:

� Considerably bulkier
� Doesn't do the "other functions" (iCal, iSync, contacts)
� Needs you to carry around (aka lose) a separate charger
� No playlists
� iTunes support highly doubtful (may come in time)
� No upgradeable firmware (no future AAC support)
� Not enough buffer = not as trustworthy in mobile situations (hard drive must "spin up" more often)
� Claim of 60% more tunes is patently false and deceptive (yeah, when encoded at 80kb ... sheesh!)

... I'll pass. They might do well with this at Wal-Mart, though. It goes with the "Duh, ah'm not gonna pay more than $500 fer a kumpooter" mouth-breather crowd.

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10/14, 12:44pm | report spam | close Reply |
This thing records

The Zen is able to record through the wired remote, although so far I've been unable to find out the spex. The Nomad 3 will record 16 bit .wav format at up to 48 kbps (DAT quality). With a set of mics and a preamp, the N3 is a killer field recorder.

Presumably, the Zen firmware (upgradeable) will also be similar to the Nomad 3 which lets you do some non-iPod things like delete tracks from the device and create playlists on the fly.

The PC software manager that comes with it is decidedly not as elegant as iTunes, however, you can easily move files in either direction without using third party applications.

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10/14, 12:48pm | report spam | close Reply |
One positive note

They decided to include firewire not USB 2.O. Apple will probably provide support for this in future iTunes. It's no iPod, but it is competition, which is good. Firewire, yes, that is good.

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10/14, 01:48pm | report spam | close Reply |
Good god.

I can't even imagine the interminable waiting time to transfer your library of songs onto this thing. It only took my iPod 10 minutes to transfer 1200 songs. This thing is gonna take at least 2 hours. Yeesh.

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10/14, 01:59pm | report spam | close Reply |
fud?

it has firewire. why would it take any longer than an ipod? (assuming it has mac compatibility at all...)

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10/14, 02:46pm | report spam | close Reply |
Can it be called Firewire

If it isn't Mac compatible? PC IEEE 1394 compatible devices for the most part say iLink. Only Mac ones I know of are called Firewire. Strange though the specs say nothing about Mac compatibility.

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10/14, 03:03pm | report spam | close Reply |
no mac compatibility

i know this has been mentioned already, but why is this posted on macnn? this POS doesn't even work with the mac so who cares?

ipod killer my arse.

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10/14, 04:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
FireWire

Yes it can be called FireWire. The IEEE 1394 board approved and licensed from Apple FireWire as the official trademark for IEEE1394.

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10/14, 10:33pm | report spam | close Reply |
Even better than Firewire

This thing uses "SB 1394"! Because we haven't found enough names for this technology yet!

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10/15, 02:10am | report spam | close Reply |
get serious people

I love apple also, but let's be logical. It's not that much bigger, it does look very sleek and it has a 20gb hard drive for the price of a 5gb ipod. It also records sound and allows you to make playlists on the fly. It's no contest: this is a better buy. What are you spending $200 more for? Calenders and a bigger screen? That's what PDA's are for. I want my mp3 player to play music and a damn lot of it too.

Now if only it would support iTunes...

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10/16, 02:45am | report spam | close Reply |
PC ipod software

the creative setup to DL songs (at least on the MuVo) is pretty good, just appears as a removable drive. beats the PC ipod software, musicmatch which is resource-hungry and bloated. does anyone know of any other PC software that you can transfer to? or if you can use it as a removeable HD as well? thats the only thing holding me back from an ipod....bad PC software.

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11/14, 10:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
Great Sound!!

The ZEN is definitely the leader of the pack.After using both IPOD and ZEN...the conclusion is...Creative very brilliant!!!Reason why i say that...is becoz...of the sound and effect it reproduce....the creative instrument is defitely a class over the IPOD in this area.EAX effect gives you the most important thing you looking for in an MP3 player....and that is the sound quality.It is also sleek and cool looking in design.And with these...the ZEN is definitely the best choice for a hard-disk-based MP3 player.

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03/05, 09:33pm | report spam | close Reply |
I wonder

Can the batteries in the zen be replaced? users on cnet say it can't be.

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07/16, 04:31pm | report spam | close Reply |
LMAO

You people are morons... :)

Cheers to that,
-Geoff

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08/27, 01:39pm | report spam | close Reply |
I like it

I've tried both the USB2.0 and Firewire version, I got somewhat better performance with USB2.0.

It is bigger than the ipod, but its hacker-friendly: you can upgrade the hard drive with almost any laptop drive. Mine's happily holding a 60Gb drive right now, which saved me the trouble of trying to figure out how much of my 43Gb MP3 collection I wanted to copy over - I have everything.

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NOMAD Jukebox Zen: new portable MP3 player

updated 08:50 am EDT, Mon October 14, 2002

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Recent Articles

Power probs.

thats such a stupid claim

Mac compatible?

no Mac support though....

Yea, and

Correction....

That thing is much bigger

That thing is much bigger

Size of Ipod in mm

wheres skip?

DRM anyone

Re: where's skip

Why is this on here?

close, but...

Bad copy cat...

Nice try, but no cigar

This thing records

One positive note

Good god.

fud?

Can it be called Firewire

no mac compatibility

FireWire

Even better than Firewire

get serious people

PC ipod software

Great Sound!!

I wonder

LMAO

I like it

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