Nomad's a great product, but could use better software
Written: Apr 02 '03 (Updated Jun 20 '03)
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Pros: 20Gb of storage, looks like a Discman from afar
Cons: Looks like a Discman from afar, software is bad
The Bottom Line: Great sound, good battery life, easy-to-navigate the on-screen menus. Included software is a pain, but not hard to overcome. The Nomad is worth owning.
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| socket41's Full Review: Creative Technology Nomad Jukebox (20 GB) MP3 Play... |
Background
I purchased a Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 (20Gb version) on a lark in late January of 2003. I had been planning on purchasing a hard-drive based jukebox for quite a long time, and was really just waiting for the opportunity. I have roughly 16 Gb of mp3s at home, and after reading a few reviews I decided to try Creative's entry, rather than less expensive alternatives. I even purchased an Aiwa deck for my car with an external input in anticipation of carrying my mp3s everywhere I went. I bought the unit at a local Best Buy, and feel good about the purchase to this day.
Looks
The Nomad looks just like a regular CD player from a distance. Some would call this a negative, but this is actually what I was looking for in a player myself. Thieves will be less likely to give the player a second look, and the player will fit into my Discman-shaped carrying cases that I already own. There is enough space for all relevant buttons on the front of the player without putting them all too close together. The buttons are convex, bubbled out to make them easy to find when not looking at them (handy in the car). The design is simple and elegant.
Function
Navigating through songs and playlists on the player itself is a snap. The player has a small scroll wheel on the side that is used to navigate the menu system, and can be pressed to make selections. Using version 1.32.02 of the firmware, I'm still having some really slow performance loading excessively large playlists (over 1000 songs). On older versions of the firmware, this would occasionally necessitate a reboot of the player. With this version, it's usually just a long (up to 10-15 seconds) pause while the player loads the playlist into memory. One thing that has always irked me is how I can't seem to find a default "Shuffle All" function without loading a playlist. I have 3500 songs on my jukebox, and I like variety - however, I don't want to have to update a "All Tracks" playlist every time I add a few songs to my jukebox. Perhaps there is a way to do this and I haven't found it yet, but if it's not there, it's a problem to me.
Software
The PC software is, well, lacking. If you would like to have tracks show up in your "Music Library" in the software, they'd best be on your local drive. Even just reading tracks off of network drives is a chore for this software (why, I'm not certain). If you have a lot of tracks and you organize them into folders yourself, it will be a pain to get them into the Music Library while reading tag information. As far as I could decipher from the instructions, you could either read files from one directory (and extract mp3 tag information), or reading from a list of subdirectories and simply discern the tag information from the filename. This may seem confusing, but so is the software.
Simply put, once you get the tracks into the player (via USB or Firewire connections), everything is fine and easy to use. But the software will make it difficult for you with a lot of mp3s - odd, since you imagine everyone purchasing this player would have quite a lot of them.
Summary
My rant against the software notwithstanding, the sound on the player has been great, battery life has not been an issue (10 hours with the included rechargeable battery). I love my Nomad, and have it with me at home, at work, and in the car.
UPDATE 6/20/03
Just to update on my Nomad after about three to four months of constant daily use, the Nomad has still been a joy to listen to. I've gotten used to the software a little bit more, but it's still clunky and cumbersome, and even updates aren't helping. Having support for Windows Media playlists would be nice, but wishful thinking on my part.
Also, as a note for anyone who enjoys sharing their music with others - Creative no longer has a full version of the Creative PlayCenter available for free download from their web site (update only now). I wanted to install the PlayCenter on my father's computer while I was on vacation, but didn't have my CD on me, and Creative Customer Service told me I was out of luck. Very nice. Oddly, the Creative File Manager is still downloadable, and you could store the PlayCenter CD itself on your jukebox to solve this problem.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 299
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Epinions.com ID:
socket41
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Member: Todd Slavinsky
Location: Plano, TX
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Just a regular guy with a lot of opinions, some relevant, some not.
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