Creative launches Zen - 20 GB MP3 player 40% cheaper than iPod
Posted on 14/10/02 17:14 by Jan Willem                             
Creative launches Zen - 20 GB MP3 player 40% cheaper than iPod

Creative has announced their new product the NOMAD JukeBox Zen. They proudly market their product as 40% cheaper then Apple's iPod and able to contain 60% more songs. The Zen has a hard drive of 20 GB is able to transfer files using both the FireWire and the USB interface and plays both MP3 and WMA files.


We've done something incredible here," said Sim Wong Hoo, CEO of Creative. "We're priced at 40% less than the competition; feature both USB and blazing fast FireWire so that we're compatible with the hundreds of millions of PCs out there; and offer outstanding audio quality at up to 98dB SNR. Another big advantage of the NOMAD Jukebox Zen is the additional support of Microsoft's WMA format. From my experience, the WMA format is superior to MP3 both in terms of quality and compression ratio, which means you can store more songs at better quality.





With the NOMAD Jukebox Zen's intuitive Scroller, users can easily move through their music and create playlists without having to be at the PC, unlike competitive products that require you to connect to the PC every time you want to create new playlists. The NOMAD Jukebox Zen's AudioSync(TM) feature even enables you to move and synchronize your music between multiple desktop and notebook PC. With the bundled Creative File Manager program, you can also use the player like a high-speed external portable hard drive."


The NOMAD Jukebox Zen is now shipping at only US$299 after a $50 mail-in rebate. More information can be found in the press release here. Discuss this device and other related Audio subjects in our Audio Forum.

Source: Yahoo.com

Reactions
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By Guest, Monday 14 October 2002 17:31
$300 is still too expensive!! Make it 99 cents Smilie
By nEXusJ, Monday 14 October 2002 17:33
nEXusJgreat deal, Creative. but i think i'll pass. the WMA don't appeal to me. if they incorporated it, then they're bound to include the lovely Windows Media protection. also what about Creatives new "Audio Protection"' we heard of in their latest Audigy cards?
By Guest, Monday 14 October 2002 18:58
60% more songs? Bullcrap. Who cares about the number of songs you can cram onto your player? What matters is quality, and WMA files encoded at 80kbps is pretty far from anything even resembling quality IMHO. Sure it's propably a sweet deal if there's no copy protection but really... only supporting mp3, wma and wav is pretty lame. Also there's no remote included so you have to buy one separate
By Guest, Monday 14 October 2002 19:02
Kill WMA support.. Get Ogg support and I'll buy that sucker Smilie WMA is bloated copy protected garbage. MP3 is the standard, and Ogg is its replacement. It will take a while for the adjustment from mp3 to OGG to complete, but it will happen so these companies might as well get a jump on the situation.. They don't even have to pay licensing fees to use the technology, its open source!
By A_MEN, Monday 14 October 2002 21:07
thinking of getting one of these Smilie
By alirio, Monday 14 October 2002 22:02
aliriothe one from Apple is better IMO!
By Guest, Tuesday 15 October 2002 00:30
"From my experience, the WMA format is superior to MP3 both in terms of quality and compression ratio, which means you can store more songs at better quality." blablalblah blah.... CRAAAAAPPP.
By spacegrass, Tuesday 15 October 2002 01:02
Oooh... so shiny.... makes me wanna touch myself! biggrin
By Augustus, Tuesday 15 October 2002 02:02
Go ahead... make your day!!! devil
By GezusK, Tuesday 15 October 2002 02:55
GezusK"The one from Apple is better" In what way? Apple only has firewire, this has USB2.0 too. Did you guys miss the part where it can be used as a portable hard drive? A 20GB portable firewire/USB2.0 drive would be nice.
By DawnLoader, Tuesday 15 October 2002 03:20
Except for iPod, I have never liked any of the Apple products. I was thinking of getting one but the "protection" thingie always prevented me from buying one. I like the looks and the design. It is perhaps the best MP3 player on the market. But now I will buy the Creative Zen, if it does not have the stupid "audio protection".
By Seán, Tuesday 15 October 2002 12:34
SeánI can tell by listening that a song is WMA without even looking at the extension! I've seen this happen at 128kbps and even 192kbps!! It appears as 192 on Winamp and I say to myself 'Somethings doesn't sound right with the song'. OGG 1.0 final, from 96kbps up is very difficult for me to determine from the original. The same goes for MP3 at 192kbps up. Smilie
By Seán, Tuesday 15 October 2002 13:21
SeánFrom what I heard, the protection (MP3 upload only) has been cracked on the Ipod; making it a good MP3 player, small portable hard drive and free up to 5/10/20GB (depends on version) of MP3 off your hard drive, i.e. plug in the Ipod to play music on the PC. The downside is both its price and the fact that it supports 1394/firewire only. Anway, I'm happy with my CD MP3 player; although a little bulky. ;9
By chsbiking, Tuesday 15 October 2002 19:17
Yeah it will take some time, because I'm switching to Ogg from MP3 and it's taking me a while. I don't think a complete change will happen until someone makes a file sharing program that promotes the Ogg format.
By sguilly, Tuesday 15 October 2002 19:56
I do not know why you are all fixated with slagging the player off for supporting WMA it also plays MP3's so what is the big deal. Also even though it does have USB it only supports version 1.1 not 2.0 so you are still limited to crappy download/upload speeds if you do not have a firewire card. It also uses 2.5" drives instead of the 1.3" (not to sure about the size but close enough) that are made by Toshiba and used by Apple in the IPods. This is how they can keep the price down as these drives are a lot more common and hence cheaper.
By rexroach, Tuesday 15 October 2002 20:36
its a bit bigger than an IPOD
By spacegrass, Tuesday 15 October 2002 23:09
hell, i'm an uneducated consumer... i'll buy anything with an "e-" or "i-" prefix on it! must mean it's fancy! shucks!
By Guest, Wednesday 16 October 2002 13:07
i swear some of you people can't read, it ALSO supports WMA. if you dont't like it (and neither do i) dont use it! doesnt mean you can't still play mp3s does it?? any you expect players to support ogg when its been in development and only finalised recently - do you have any idea what implementing hardware decoding invloves. It is strange logistics to invest in a player to support a constantly changing format.
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