Devhux

As I stated in another thread, I broke down and picked up a Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra 40GB MP3 player today. For those looking at a hard drive-based player, here's my initial impressions of it.

The player itself:

The Zen Xtra is definately larger than an iPod, although I honestly don't mind the added bulk / weight. It doesn't quite fit in my jeans' pocket, but a larger coat pocket is no problem. Furthermore, the unit comes with a nice little carrying case complete with belt clip that holds the unit VERY snugly (and lets you access all the buttons).

The buttons all have a solid feel to them, with each one requiring a nice, firm push to activate (even the wheel). In no way does this player feel like a cheap toy.

As for the display, well..... it's simply amazing! Creative made the display quite a bit larger than the Zen / Zen NX (and I believe it's about the same size, if not bigger, than the Jukebox 3's LCD. Fonts are very clear and large enough to read easily from a distance.

Finally, the unit ships with a REMOVEABLE Lithium-Ion battery (and accessing it is extremely easy). Prices are around $50 or so for a replacement.

Installation of Drivers

*sigh* Anyone here ever have problems with installing Creative drivers before? Firstly, the installation program would not run (autoplay.inf referred to a file CTRUN.EXE which seemed to do absolutely nothing when I tried double-clicking on it). Finally, I discovered the true setup was under the \PDE directory (whatever THAT means). SO I go about installing the Jukebox drivers and Nomad Explorer (more on this one). After installation, I launch Nomad Explorer, double-click on my Jukebox, and nothing.

I eventually attempt to uninstall the drivers and try again, which seems to work, but a reinstallation generates an error (GRRR). Finally I notice that the uninstaller failed to remove most of the driver files and registry entries, so I manually delete these and then the software reinstalls just fine.

This time, I noticed a "Nomad Explorer" item in my Windows Explorer diretory tree. Accessing the Nomad this way seems to work just fine (although if I double-click the Nomad on the right side of an Explorer window, it still doesn't work -- I have to click on the entry on the left pane -- odd).

While copying files, I've also noticed it sometimes tries to copy part of a file, then tells me there's already an existing file with the same name on the Nomad -- even though I have no duplicates in my music folders at all........ odd.

Nomad Explorer does seem to be useful, but it's still a tad buggy -- hopefully Creative addresses this one soon.

I'll add to this once I actually try out the player with some of my tunes.

Devhux

For those who haven't seen the Xtra yet, you can access a few pics at:

http://dj-devo.sytes.net/

(Let's just hope this works).