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Topic: Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra (Read 16238 times) previous topic - next topic
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Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

I saw a NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra in the store the other day and it looked like a pretty nice unit.  It didn't have batteries in it so I couldn't really play with it and get a feel for panel or anything.

I'm wondering if anybody out there owns one of these and is happy/disappointed with it.  I think that's what I'm looking for more than anything, can somebody confirm it's just terrible -- crashes all the time (literal hard drive crash, or something annoying like some CD devices get bumped to hard and power down), missing key features, 14 hour battery life is overstated etc.

It seems like a pretty good price, 30 Gig one can be had for $300 U.S. (at www.provantage.com website I see it is $270).

I believe this player is a little smaller than the Archos product and iRiver is a little more expensive (20 gig is $400, looks like you get one of those remotes on the cord which is nice though).

Edit:  Oh to be fair iRiver plays Ogg Vorbis if you're interested in that.  I'm actually not as woried about that.  I wonder if future updates to the BIOS of a device like a Nomad or iPod could add this functionality.

Would be grateful to hear your feedback.

Thanks.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #1 –
I own Creative's Nomad Jukebox 3 - 40 GIG. I can't speak on behalf of the Zen (other than to say it's a nice looking unit ala Ipod) but do know I'm very satisfied with my Nomad3. To answer your specific questions:

The unit basically never crashes. I say basically, because in over 1 year of ownership, I've had it "lock up" (which forced me to crash it) maybe two times. A simple reset beneath the unit (via paper clip to small hole much like a CDRom drive) and the unit "rebuilds" the library, playlists, etc. Very nice. This is what I mean by crashing.. maybe should've worded it as, "resetting."

In terms of skipping, and this would be regular playback on the train/tram to work - perfect; skip free performance.

Nomad3 offers 2 battery bays, allowing up to 22 hours of playback (to knowledge, no other portable unit offers such long of running time - useful for long global flights, not having to charge as often, etc. - In fact, I just picked up a second battery through Amazon.com's electronic area for $33 USD.

I paid $360.USD through compuplus.com last December ('02). I believe the Nomad3 now comes with choice of $60 GIG HDD, for about this price! As I filled my 40 gig in the matter of 1 week, this might be something to look for (not to mention your library may be 300 GIG+). In terms of solution, I'm looking forward to the day when large laptop HDD's (say 200GIG) are available/reasonably priced so that I can ghost the OS inc. data to new HDD and pop into NOMAD.. It would be fun to mod the unit as/is and slave (and power) an external 160 GIG IDE HDD, off the back providing plenty of storage, today. However, I have not the time.

I have flashed the BIOS of the unit twice since purchase.. easy, trouble-free. One update simply included better/faster scroll through music library.. which I noticed was an improvement, straight away.

Anyway, I know you asked about the Zen, but as the Nomad and Zen are both Creative products, thought my experience might help. Overall, I highly recommend the Nomad3. Check into it, as you're shopping different units. I think you'll find you get more bang for the buck.

Regards,
revox

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #2 –
Interesting, glad to hear you have had a good experience with your Nomad overall.  Hopefully the new units are only better if anything.

I suppose another thing I'm a little confused about is there are 3 different new Nomads that seem to be very similar:

-Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen NX
-NOMAD Jukebox Zen
-NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

I think I can see a few differences.
1.  The Zen NX is slightly lighter and has a normal LCD screen instead of backlit blue (both the Zen and Zen Xtra have blue backlit).
2.  The Zen Xtra has 30,40, 60 gig sizes when the (non-extra) has only 20, 60.
3.  Zen Xtra has a bigger screen than the Zen.

Any other differences?

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #3 –
It's been about a week and this post hasn't caught too many people's interest.

I'm thinking of putting an order in for this device, please let me know if you have any last minute warnings against buying this device!

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #4 –
Hi,
I bought the Zen Xtra about a week ago. Here is my review:

The Pros:

User replaceable battery. Excellent sound quality. I believe it has the best sound quality amongst all those portable audio players. Plus, it is a lot more affordable. It plays my LAME 3.90.3 --aps files flawlessly. The gap between tracks is small. The screen is big and very legible. Navigation is quite easy. Firmware upgradation is easy. It is slightly bigger than other players but fits into pockets easily. It has never crashed-I have even dropped it once from a height of about 1 foot. I have never pressed the "reset" switch even once-extremely stable. Easy, menu driven interface. Universal charger-works anywhere in the world. About 10-12 hours of battery life. USB 2.0 and 1.1 support. No "missing" features. All that's in the ads are in the unit too.

The Cons:

Casing is quite flimsy. The cover which allows you to insert the battery is loose. The scrollwheel needs a little getting used to and is not very easy to use. In fact, I am scared that the scroll-wheel might stop working soon. The earphones are crappy. I already had a pair of Sennheiser PX 100, so that was no big deal for me. Only 3-months warranty from Creative. That's why I bought the extended service plan from Circuit City. The accompanying software is okay-not very good. Buy Red Chair's Notmad Explorer. You'll adore your Zen Xtra after you do that.

I am pleased with my jukebox. I can overlook the cons solely by looking at sound quality, price and the fact that the battery is replaceable. By the way, the 30GB unit is available for $219.99 at CircuitCity. Buy your Zen Xtra today.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #5 –
Quote
Hey, I have just written a review about the Creative Zen Xtra. I have posted it under a post that you started. Did you buy your's already? What do you think? I think that the Nomad is a good thing to buy. Let me know. Bye.


After having mine for a few months now I guess I'll update this post.

I have been fairly happy with mine.  As you say it seems to play any mp3 you throw at it and with good sound quality.  I definitely can vouch for the overall quality of this device.  I guess I'll throw in a few cons, pros, and general comments that are the sort of things that are hard to get an impression about when reading most of the technical specs you see online.

1. CON - I really wish there was a button that you could hit that would advance you to the next album.  For instance, I usually add about 5 albums and sometimes get bored with an album.  Instead of heading to the list of music, scrolling down with the wheel and picking play now, I wish I could hit a "next album" button kind of like the "next track" button.

2.  CON (minor thing) - The unit seems to use a lot of power at start up.  That is, if you play it continually the battery lasts a long time like on a long car trip.  I notice from using it every day during my train ride for about 20 minutes to work and then 20 minute home at night that the battery gets used up a lot faster that way.

3.  General Comment - This isn't overly specific to the Zen player itself, but you really have to be a lot more careful about tagging CDs well or else the menus will be a nightmare.  I'm sure all mp3 players have this problem.  The thing is if you download mp3s from somewhere and they do no tagging, a bad job of tagging, or just do it in a way different than your preference it's quite a manual process to fix it.  People say you can use foobar to fix tags to your preference but it doesn't seem easy and I just haven't had the time to dig deeply into Foobar.

4.  PRO - Blue backlit screen is really handy when I'm in the car at night or early morning.  This feature was more useful than I first thought although I do think if you overuse it too much it drains the battery significantly.

5.  CON (minor thing) - The player doesn't appear to have a stop button.  Just strikes me as odd.  I think one time when I plugged it in to add songs and charge the battery I pressed the pause button and after 5 minutes (or whatever it is) the player automatically turned off.  I did have to reset the player to get it working, in fact I was standing on a train and didn't have a paper clip so I just took the battery out and put it back in.  I admit I didn't have the newest BIOS at the time and I still don't!

6.  The earbud headphones were fairly large and didn't fit in my ear too well.  I just stuck with my usual Sony Fontopid headphones because they are comfortable and quite good in that they don't transmit the sound out and piss off others when you're on a train for instance.

7.  I bought my unit at provantage.com because they had the best price at the time (tied with a few others) and were willing to ship to Canada.  I still have a major beef that you cannot easily get these units in Canada and if I wanted something like a 2nd battery I'd have to order it online, probably pay ridiculous shipping charge too.  I actually think Creative is willing to ship to Canada which is actually quite big of them, I bet 80% of the main e-retailers don't ship to Canada (NewEgg and Amazon.com electronics are 2 big names that won't ship here).

I am also left thinking by looking at the size and shape of the battery that there is probably some cell phone battery out there that is the same.

8.  I also have a concern with the wheel device.  If that part ever breaks you're screwed.  I really hope it stands up over time.

Be warned I'm an extremely picky customer so despite all of the little things I've mentioned it's a good device overall.  I'm just trying to mention little things that may be big pet peeves for others and would be something they want to know before buying.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #6 –
Quote
Quote

5.  CON (minor thing) - The player doesn't appear to have a stop button.  Just strikes me as odd.  I think one time when I plugged it in to add songs and charge the battery I pressed the pause button and after 5 minutes (or whatever it is) the player automatically turned off.  I did have to reset the player to get it working, in fact I was standing on a train and didn't have a paper clip so I just took the battery out and put it back in.  I admit I didn't have the newest BIOS at the time and I still don't!
8.  I also have a concern with the wheel device.  If that part ever breaks you're screwed.  I really hope it stands up over time.

Hmm, Seems to me that the player actually shut itself off. You can change this in your "Profile". This is actually a feature and not a CON.

I too am extremely conerned about the scroll-wheel. The only reason I didn't buy an iRiver IHP-120 was because of the replaceable battery on the Zen. I just hope that the battery doesn't outlast the player itself due to a broken scroll-wheel.

Another piece of news is that Realplayer 10 now supports the Zen Xtra. It seems like a better alternative to MediaSource. Plus, you won't actually have to buy Notmad Explorer .

That's all for now, keep the reviews coming!!

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #7 –
Quote
Quote

5.  CON (minor thing) - The player doesn't appear to have a stop button.  Just strikes me as odd.  I think one time when I plugged it in to add songs and charge the battery I pressed the pause button and after 5 minutes (or whatever it is) the player automatically turned off.  I did have to reset the player to get it working, in fact I was standing on a train and didn't have a paper clip so I just took the battery out and put it back in.  I admit I didn't have the newest BIOS at the time and I still don't!

Hmm, Seems to me that the player actually shut itself off. You can change this in your "Profile". This is actually a feature and not a CON.

I have encountered a behaviour similar to the one postul8or describes on my Zen NX. If it's actually the same, it's different from the normal shutting-down. The player has a pretty long standby time, then it shuts down. But usually you can just turn it on and use it after it has booted up.
But it happened to me twice already, that the player couldn't be used after turning it on. It would show the menu, but none of the buttons worked (not even the scroll whell, so it wasn't due to button lock). The first time this happened I thought it was because I plugged it out while it was recharging. But the second time I didn't do anything like this.
Removing the battery and putting it back in corrected the problem.

As for general experiences, I had the player for about a month now and I really like it. It has some deficiencies, obviously (it's much cheaper than any comparable hard disk player after all), but none of them are too annoying. The main problem is the small LCD screen (I have the normal NX version, not the Xtra) and the scroll wheel. The combination of those makes it hard to get through a long list of artists without scrolling up and down a few times (the scrolling gets pretty fast if you keep the scroll wheel in one direction and since you only see 4 entries at a time it's virtually impossible to stop at the right time).
But apart from that I was pretty surprised how much thought has obviously gone into the player (you wouldn't expect that from Creative, would you?). I really like the navigation (softwarewise) and menu structure. It's pretty obvious that someone at Creative actually used the player before they sold it (and that's a high compliment).
I also like the layout of the buttons. The player is easily controllable with one hand and the buttons are reachable and distinct enough that you can control it inside your pocket once you know where all the buttons are (this point might sound dumb, but I like the fact that I don't have to get the player out everytime I want to change the volume or skip some song).

So, it's probably not the greatest player out there but it's a pretty amazing value.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #8 –
Based upon some reviews I've read about the Zen Xtra, is that it has the best sound quality of any premium DAP on the market right now.  I have not been able to test this though.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #9 –
Quote
Quote

I have encountered a behaviour similar to the one postul8or describes on my Zen NX. If it's actually the same, it's different from the normal shutting-down. The player has a pretty long standby time, then it shuts down. But usually you can just turn it on and use it after it has booted up.
But it happened to me twice already, that the player couldn't be used after turning it on. It would show the menu, but none of the buttons worked (not even the scroll whell, so it wasn't due to button lock).

Hi,
  I have never had ANY problems with my Zen Xtra. However, this may help. Have you tried reloading the OS (Flashing the firmware). Okay. You can do this in two ways. One is described in the manual. The other is like this. Turn the player off. While holding the Play/Pause button pressed, press the reset switch with a paper clip. Keep the Play/Pause button pressed. Now you will see a rescue screen (This wasn't in the manual, was it?). The first option is to scan the disk. This does NOT report bad sectors or other hard-disk problems but will re-organize the files on the disk and rebuild the music library. Sometimes, bad/corrupt files MAY cause the problems you describe. The second option is to format the disk which will obviously format the disk and you will lose everything on it. The last option is to reload the OS. Now, I flashed the firmware on my Zen Xtra the moment I recieved it. But for some reason, it wasn't flashed properly and it still showed the old OS version. This time, I erased the firmware first by choosing the third option on the rescue menu and chose the 4th option->"Reboot". Then, I downloaded the latest version of the firmware program (OS) and reloaded it using the USB cable. This time my firmware was flashed properly. Try this and tell me if it works. Bye.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #10 –
Thanks for your explanation, I'll probably try that sometime.
Anyway, it's not like it's a major problem. As I said, it happened only twice and shortly removing the battery corrected it, which is why I didn't really bother to find a solution so far.

By the way, for those who are worried about the robustness of hard disk players, I have dropped mine from a formidable height once, without any adverse effects so far (the shut-off problem happened before that). Which is not meant to encourage anyone to do the same, of course. 

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #11 –
Quote
By the way, for those who are worried about the robustness of hard disk players, I have dropped mine from a formidable height once, without any adverse effects so far (the shut-off problem happened before that).

Thanks, this was really another cause of concern for me. I too dropped mine once but from a height of about one foot . I was really scared about that. Thankfully, I THINK nothing happened to my beloved jukebox . Thanks again.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #12 –
Many people have reported many problems with the Zen after one month of usage. Some broken (crashed) hard drives, some bad headphone jacks, some unpredictable freezes, etc. Has somebody experienced such problems? I have owned the Jukebox for three weeks now and never had any problems. If it is indeed so bad, I will return it and get a refund. I however have only five more days left to do this. So, please let me know if it is indeed as bad as people on amazon.com claim it to be. Thanks.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #13 –
Quote
If it is indeed so bad, I will return it and get a refund. I however have only five more days left to do this. So, please let me know if it is indeed as bad as people on amazon.com claim it to be. Thanks.


I think with most electronic devices, you are going to find your fare share of bad reviews.  Prior to purchasing a Rio Karma, I constantly read negaitve reviews (in message boards) about Karma's crashing and whatnot.  People who post negative reviews do not represent the masses.  They represent the small faction of users who are pissed off that they spent a lot of money on a device that failed on them.  They are just showing their frustration in an attempt to pass it on to others to scare them away from a product.  Do devices fail?  Certaintly, but if you were to research anything, you'll find a plethora of negative reviews, so then you'd never purchase any product?

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #14 –
Can u transfer mp3 to zen xtra with creative playcenter3?

ive got njb3 and it works perfect with playcenter3

i dont use mediasource because its sometime cant read mp3 tag and it transfer my tagged mp3 to jukebox as untaged ones

i ordered an zen xtra30 gb off newegg.com for 250$ and im just wondering if this unit gonna work with classic playcenter3....

thanks
My Favorite Lame Preset

--alt-preset fast insane

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #15 –
Wow, lots of different experiences from different people.  I guess I'll add my 2 cents and updates of my experience with this player.

Durability:  My player actually survived quite a blow.  Was in my knapsack which probably weighed 20 pounds (10 kg) and fell off the top shelf of a closet about 6 feet high.  I am not sure if the knapsack dropped directly on the player or not, all I know is it still works fine 2.5 months later.  I am sure this kind of thing would be a lot worse if the player was on and actively reading data from the disk!  I will be interested to hear if anyone breaks their scroller button, or the blue backlighting breaks (the blue backlighting broke on the display for my PC case last week!).

The lack of an "off" button:  I have not experienced another freeze because I have not pressed the issue.  When I put the device there to charge I make sure it's turned off instead of leaving it on an pausing it, simple.

Player freezes:  This is somewhat related to the lack of an off button, but however it is that people are freezing there player I'll try and offer some advice.  I noticed a few months back that the latest BIOS update said it addressed a freezing issue or some such thing so it might be worth updating the BIOS with the latest from the Creative web site.  The other thing that wonder about is if anyone has encountered a crash/freeze situation because of a bad/odd mp3 encode.  That is, maybe some kind of mp3 encoder created an mp3 which broke the basic rules of the mp3 codec and caused a problem in the Zen Xtra when it tried to decode the music.  If anyone can repeatedly get their player to freeze on one song, or any song on an album I would guess this could be the problem.  To find out more information about the codec used in music you could try and find a program called EncSpot to see which codec created the mp3 (Lame, Xing, Fraunhofer, less known codecs etc.).  I apologize if I'm out of date and there is a better tool out there for this kind of codec identification.

Small Screen:  I think the fact of the matter is, if you have a 19" monitor at home and are used to having a big playlist with Winamp/Foobar and a mouse to navigate through it you will definitely find it's an adjustment moving to a 2" display with a wheel that acts as a movement device and a mouse button!  People that have tagged their mp3s well for years will find life easier.  People for years have preferred the Artist Name - Album Name - Track Number - Track Title format when trading mp3s, and I always found the Artist Name - Album Name to be redundant.  I find mp3s tagged in this manner are too long, the player will slowly scroll to the right, to see the track number and track title....but as a matter of personal perference I like to only have the track number and track title in the song title area so I don't have to wait for the scrolling to the right to show me what I want.

The Creative Software:  Actually I don't like it that much but it does the trick.  It's hard to find the perfect program to fix mp3s which were not tagged properly in any case.  The best medicine is to tag them properly when encoding them (the saying if you want it done right do it yourself kind of comes to mind here).  I would be interested to hear if people are having success using other software or some tricks to load their player with music.

Battery Life:  Very noticably shorter than the 12-14 hours mentioned when you encode at rates higher than 128 kbps.  Almost none of my music is at 128 kbps, most is at 192, 256 or VBR averaging 160-200 kbps which takes the battery life to 8 hours.  It's also hard to say, I listen for about 20 minutes to and from work so it's not continuous play.  I find that I can fully charge the player, use it for a Friday (20 mins twice) and on the Monday after it has sat for 2 days the battery indicator will have gone down just for sitting there.  Maybe it's my imagination, but I'm pretty sure this is what I'm seeing.  Rechargable batteries do discharge, although normally not quickly when they are quite new.  Maybe the battery life indicator on the unit isn't too accurate.  This is also the first lithium battery I have ever owned.

That's it for now, please keep others informed about your good and bad experiences with this device.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #16 –
As a Jukebox 3 owner, I HIGHLY recommend you drop a couple bills on a copy of NOTMAD explorer. Lets you drag and drop files to your Nomad just like another drive (Windows shell integration), plus has excellent one-touch synchronization. WAY WAY better than the crappy Creative software.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #17 –
Nomad Zen xtra + Notmad explorer from redchair = happy exxxie.

I love my zen, not least because its not made by Apple.


wow! my first ever post!

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #18 –
I have a Nomad Jukebox Zen NX. It works fine. I never tried the headphones with it. I have a PX100 for normal listening and Ety 4P for hardcore listening and noisy environment (plane, car, train, baby, …). The sound is good and I would say excellent for a portable.

I don’t like the wheel and it freeze sometimes especially when it is under the sun. Not a big deal, a reset and everything is back again. That’s all for the cons.

I bought also a 2nd battery, so I can be sure to have a non stop service and I can discharge the battery completely in order to keep them alive as long as possible.

The iRiver seems very interesting too because I would have a line and an spdif output. Moreover, it’s possible to use it as an external hd. But I finally choose the Zen for the price/capacity and the good sound without external amp.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #19 –
Anyone thinking of buying a zen xtra should wait a few days. Creative is coming up with a new kick-ass DAP. A true iPod killer. Check out the pictures here.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #20 –
I just bought a factory-fresh 40GB Zen Xtra for $199USD at a brick-and-mortar music store. Woohoo, my first DAP! I've been holding out for, what, years because these darn things cost too much money (especially since I don't expect them to last very long with a hard drive and all) but when I can get a brand-name player with 40GB of storage for under $200, I'm in.

I realize I now have to commit to MP3 but I refuse to fork over big bucks for one of those iRiver ogg portables. And with 40GB of storage, I can use a decent bitrate...LAME -V5 or better should provide sufficient quality for the task.

Interestingly, the product box (bubble-type, not cardboard) says the player is covered under a one-year warranty (rather than 90 days). Did Creative upgrade that recently? Hey, maybe they fixed the headphone jack soldering joints once and for all and have the courage to extend the standard warranty. My player also already had the latest firmware (1.03.02) so hopefully I have a late-revision unit that has outgrown the earlier teething problems.

The iPod still has that bling-bling aura that my Xtra lacks, but at least the latter is $200 cheaper (thanks to it being late in its product cycle).

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #21 –
I refuse to buy any player that doesn't show up as a drive and allow free movment of music between the computer and the player.  I want to organize things the way I want and with 40 gigs it's important to make using the player fit my needs using the tools I choose.  Maybe Creative has learned but their old products assumed you were stupid and decided what was best for you.

I know this keeps me from a lot of products but there are still enough out there to keep me statisfied.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #22 –
The Zen Xtra isn't a true plug-and-play device but you can marshall files (not just audio) back and forth using the included Nomad Explorer or the popular third-party Notmad Explorer (which are Windows Explorer extensions, not some awful bloatware). But no, you can't just plug it into the USB port and have the device show up as a drive letter (like an external hard drive).

My heart dropped when I opened the package and saw how small and light the included Li-ion battery is. It looks like a CompactFlash card and it weighs about 17 grams...no way in hell is this going to deliver 14 hours, I'm thinking. I wish it were bigger and heavier! Still, I've used my player for 5 hours thus far today and 2 out of 3 bars remain...the LCD is pretty damn nice and I've been getting away with the contrast set to 20% (from the default 50%). 30% is plenty contrasty.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #23 –
Quote
I own Creative's Nomad Jukebox 3 - 40 GIG. I can't speak on behalf of the Zen (other than to say it's a nice looking unit ala Ipod) but do know I'm very satisfied with my Nomad3. To answer your specific questions:

The unit basically never crashes. I say basically, because in over 1 year of ownership, I've had it "lock up" (which forced me to crash it) maybe two times. A simple reset beneath the unit (via paper clip to small hole much like a CDRom drive) and the unit "rebuilds" the library, playlists, etc. Very nice. This is what I mean by crashing.. maybe should've worded it as, "resetting."

In terms of skipping, and this would be regular playback on the train/tram to work - perfect; skip free performance.

Nomad3 offers 2 battery bays, allowing up to 22 hours of playback (to knowledge, no other portable unit offers such long of running time - useful for long global flights, not having to charge as often, etc. - In fact, I just picked up a second battery through Amazon.com's electronic area for $33 USD.

I paid $360.USD through compuplus.com last December ('02). I believe the Nomad3 now comes with choice of $60 GIG HDD, for about this price! As I filled my 40 gig in the matter of 1 week, this might be something to look for (not to mention your library may be 300 GIG+). In terms of solution, I'm looking forward to the day when large laptop HDD's (say 200GIG) are available/reasonably priced so that I can ghost the OS inc. data to new HDD and pop into NOMAD.. It would be fun to mod the unit as/is and slave (and power) an external 160 GIG IDE HDD, off the back providing plenty of storage, today. However, I have not the time.

I have flashed the BIOS of the unit twice since purchase.. easy, trouble-free. One update simply included better/faster scroll through music library.. which I noticed was an improvement, straight away.

Anyway, I know you asked about the Zen, but as the Nomad and Zen are both Creative products, thought my experience might help. Overall, I highly recommend the Nomad3. Check into it, as you're shopping different units. I think you'll find you get more bang for the buck.

Regards,
revox
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=156354"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Here's an important information:
Well I must say that to buy a new batterie you should've buyed one on Ebay.
I just bought one there for $10.50. Believe it or not, it is new. Tested it myself.

Opinions on Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra

Reply #24 –
Can't believe that a thread more than a year old is getting ressurected like this. By the way. I have used my Zen Xtra for about a year now. I am very happy with it. Despite all the reports, my headphone jack is still intact. My battery doesn't seem to have lost any power. The hard drive has never crashed. The unit froze a couple of times (in a year!!) and I simply had to reset it.
That's it!! If you wanna buy an affordable MP3 player. Get this.