iPods suck...go ZEN!

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My brother was trying to brag about his little iPod mini the other day...all I had to do to shut him up was pull out my new Creative Zen Micro. It has the same amount of space, looks better, and lacks the taint of the apple.

So taking a closer look at my Zen Micro, I learned that it’s way more than just an Mp3 player.

• It has an FM tuner/recorder
• A voice recorder
• A bunch of EQ settings and a custom - user set EQ band
• An option for "removable storage" which basically means you can use some (or all) of the space to transport non-musical data on the memory
• The touch pad feels better than the iPod mini...and just works better IMO
• It can play .mp3, .wma with or without the stupid M$ 'Play For Sure' crap, and .wav files
• It has play lists you can create and add songs to
• It has a bunch of play modes (normal, repeat track, repeat all, shuffle, shuffle repeat, recently heard, rarely heard)
• It has a rechargeable - removable battery that lasts longer than the iPod mini
• It can be recharged through the USB port or through a wall plug adapter
• It comes with drag and drop organization which transfers music pretty fast (I transferred all my 309 songs in about 3 minutes or so)
• But most of all, it sounds awesome!

When I read reviews on the the iPod vs the Zen touch or the iPod Mini vs the Zen Micro, the iPod usually only wins because of that "trendy" look you'll get by toting it around with you...

Any Zen Touch, or Zen Micro owners who want to add anything? Or any Apple/Mac-in-the-Trash defenders want to prove their Mp3 player is more than just trendy?

 

I do have to admire the brilliant marketing of the iPod that has made it synonymous with digital music and become a must-have item. Whether or not it is the best product or not, the marketing has been ingenious.

 

Can you link us to your particular model Kitrax? I must admit I am interested!

 

Errr....Here's Creative Lab's official website for the Zen Micro

Also, find it at BestBuy

Yay

 

Apparently the Creative Zen outsold the iPod on amazon.co.uk and I am very interested in getting one for myself!

Roughly how many albums could you get on 40GB?

 

A very rough estimate: 200 albums. At least.

And a _Creative_ player at that cost? Umm... maybe not. It's Creative after all.

 

Pfft, iRiver H340 is the best MP3 player. Plays videos and has a colour screen, you can read text files, look at pictures and plays ogg files in addition to almost all the Zen Micro can do. You need no special software to put stuff on; it just acts as an external hard drive. I once decided to play BG2 off it.

It has a slightly lower sound quality than a Zen though, and no Recently Heard or Rarely Heard functions. It still has a better sound quality than an iPod however, which has the lowest sound quality of any MP3 player. I can't notice the differences in sound quality between any two brands though.

 

Heh...my Maxim magazine for August has an article on page 152 of 4 Mp3 players that are better than the iPod...the Zen Micro and the iRiver thingy were two of them.

 

As an early user of the ipod I would say if I was buying again it would NOT be the ipod, it might be one of Creative's models or iRiver or even Sony but not a Macintosh product. Points against the ipod even in it's update form.

1) Battery life still lousy, although improved over earlier models.

2)Only model that can display colour pictures over-priced, no models can display video at all.

3) As pointed out above sound quality is sub-par and the fact that you cannot adjust the individual parameters of equalizer presets is annoying.

4)Expensive and often overpriced accessories.

I feel buying an iPod was one of my worst decisions in buying a piece of 'gadgetry' and had I waited longer and done more research I could have got far more for what I paid.

 

Personally, I would go for Archos. Founded in 1988, ARCHOS designs and manufactures the industry’s most unique line of miniature peripherals for people on the go.
And not so expensive

 

very true. my gf has spent a ****load on getting those ipod cases and the thing that lets you play it on radio and it's speaker set and some other stuff.

myself, im using an mpio fy400. not too bad, but very low carrying capacity at a measly 256mb. i was considering getting a new player, probably the zen, but when I was in Europe I ran my phone bill up to nearly the equivalent of 250USD and had to pay my mom so no new player for me

 

The official speaker set that Apple do to go with the iPod extracts the urine in no small way as it costs as much as a reasonable all-in-one stereo unit from companies like Denon or Technics would. I was looking at the Archos site that Lynadin gave a link to there and I think it's a choice between them or Creative next time. Also, no mucking about having to buy a card to do Firewire with as I originally had to with my iPod.

 

Oh, Archos is awsome! Archos was my second choice for a Mp3 player. Their Gmini 400 is awsome...but I don't need to look at pictures or video on such a small screen when I have a laptop for that.

 

I personally chose Archos because of the MP3 player/recorder. It was perfect to use with my band... I recorded our rehearsals on the Archos, an hour after the songs would be uploaded, so we could all listen to the new songs we just made.
I love techno-magic

 

Or a cell phone .

 

My cell phone is an exceptionally old Nokia model, but it does all I want from a phone. Which is, make and receive calls and do text message. I do not want my phone to do 500 other things, although that is a personal view.

Lynadin may I ask what style of music your band play at all?

 

Marcus O'Murchu - hear! hear! I couldn't agree more.

 

*caugh* Old fart *caugh*

 

Yes, very much like my old Intel 3000 MP3 player, which just plays music. It works for me.