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Go Get an ipod
I purchased this Creative mp3 player a year ago and it worked fine for over that year with only one time freezing. Over the last month I noticed that it would constantly freeze, lock up at random times, and change to random songs. All I wanted was something that would play my music without problems and have simple seemless interface with the music program (for me window's media 10). This is not the idea with this mp3 player. It would sometimes not be detected by the computer even though the drivers were installed! Also the user interface is totally out of wak, same with the touch pad which in one touch can go though many songs at a time. A definate 2 thumbs down and i MEAN IT! I would rather get an ipod that would work and last me for at least 2-3 years. I guess that this product was not made to fuction past one year of operation. Don't kid me, I loved it when I first got it but it has been a total migraine lately, expecially with all the happy people around me with ipods that work. This is in no way a good item. Which brings me to my main point. Go get an ipod! BUTTON BREAKS !!! I had this unit for about 1 year now I hardley used it, I just took on my trip and I discovered the lock button broke for no apparant reason. I am buying IPOD, if I am going to spend couple of hundred $ at least I am going to buy the industry standard, not wanabe! Two Thumbs DOWN After owning a Creative Zen Touch 20gb MP3 Player for exactly one year now, I have found it to have constantly been getting worse since the day I powered it on for the first time. I would not exactly say that is a good purchase for either a) durability, b) the long-term buyer, c) simplicity. Here are the reasons why it is an unreliable purchase: Touch Pad: This is WAY too sensitive. Slide your thumb too fast and you will skip over 30-40 songs on your playlist. Dust: The screen gets dust stuck in between the protective layer of the screen and the screen itself, making for irritating little black dots on the screen when the backlight is on Sound: Very bad bass. Again, I can hear little pops when listening to bass-heavy songs all the time (even at low volume). Distracting and extremely irritating when it comes to listening. Random: This is by far the most pointless part of this entire MP3 player. Accidently pushing it means queueing all of your tracks up and shuffling them up, ruining your current playlist and forcing you to go through six menus of stuff just to turn it off. I actually threw my Zen at my cat because it was acting so stupid. Degradability: After owning a Zen Touch for 1 year now, I have noticed a big difference in the buttons on the player (namely the Prev-Track, Play/Pause, and Forward-Track buttons). Sometimes pushing the Forward button ends up you pausing the track, and pushing the Play/Pause button will restart the track, or skip a track. This gets really frustrating especially when you just want to change the track and continue what you are doing quickly. Fast-Forward/Rewind: This can be a pain doing because most of the time you will just restart the track or skip to the next track rather than fast-forwarding or rewinding. Very lame. Hold Button: The hold button (locks all buttons and the backlight so they do not function) is very very picky about where it has to be before it will lock/unlock your Zen. The button also gets very stubborn and won't move (see the definition of a 'mule' for a better explanation). Firmware: Your Zen's battery must have at least 80% life left in it or your computer will not detect your Zen when it is connected to the USB 2.0 cable supplied with it. Even when it does detect it, it takes around 10 seconds per song (pretty painful to transfer 100+ CD's in my home collection) to transfer to the Zen. Battery: 24 hour battery? Only at 64kbps, which sounds utterly horrible. The usual encoding I use is 128kbps, which the battery lasts around 9-10 hours or so before dying. Stability: Frequently my Zen CRASHES after transferring songs to it, and will have to take a painful 30 minutes out of my life to fix all 15GB of songs on it. Software: The Zen comes with an excessive amount of software that half of is completely useless or has the same function in the Creative MediaOrganizer software. Nomad Jukebox Explorer?? Should this be Zen Touch Explorer? :-/ Interface: Notice that it is exactly the same as the interface used in the Dell DJ. Unoriginal. Playlists: They do not update the original playlist when you add more songs to one or remove them from one. You have to spend 5 minutes typing in 15 characters just to save over your old one (contributed to by the touch pad). The good parts of it? - Well, it's easy to use. - Excellent sound (except bad bass) - Its great for throwing at people (no joke, it HURTS) My suggestion is to go search for a Zen Vision:M, and purchase that instead of this. Half of these problems are fixed in the Vision:M, and it is both thinner, and has A LOT more features than this. In conclusion, this is NOT a good alternative to the iPod, but the Zen Vision:M, however, is definitely worth taking a peek before taking a juicy bite out of the apple that is your wallet. Nice...for a while This Machine was excellent, for a while. For the first 6 to 8 months i owned the machine, it worked great, it did exactly what i wanted, and it worked with my pc. then at about 9 months, it all went downhill. The touch pad, works about 10 % of the time, if im lucky. The buttons rarely do what they are marked to do, and the tech support was no help at all. And if you are an OS X user, forget about it. Overall, if you are going to buy this mp3 player, pay the extra couple bucks and get an ipod that is more reliable, holds more songs, has a better batery life, and is easier to use. I would not recomend this product to anyone! nothing bad to say i got my creative as a present and have been using it for about a year. i thought i would have tons of songs, but my 400 are like a pinprick to a 20GB player, and it's really really easy to use, even while driving (which i don't recommend anyway, b/c it's obviously still a little distracting). plus, the creative mediasource organizer is really user friendly. i usually just play one of my playlist (which are simple to make - i have about 10) or hit the random button to mix it up a little. i'd really recommend it to anyone who wants all their music at their fingertips. | |
