CREATIVE.COM - Creative Zen Microhttp://images.creative.com/Zen Micro/images/lprice/all_ten_colours.gif
I had purchased this with the full intent of using the new Rhapsody to go service. After a firmware upgrade and a driver and software upgrade on the PC I was ready to Rock with Rhapsody to go. Being a Rhapsody customer (
www.listen.com)for the last year I was excited to see that I could download rhapsody content to my new Creative ZEN (which was purchased just because of it's capabilities to do so) and take rhapsody everywhere.
This was just a complete mess for the first week. After an upgrade by Rhapsody because of huge customer complaints, things seem to be working much better. I'm apprehensive though that this is truly solved. DRM (Digital Rights Management) seems to be the major issue. The product also doesn't seem to handle syncing properly but I have 30 days worth of music (I hope) on the device before I have to re-load it if the sync really doesn't work.
The Zen is a really nice product. Like the iPod it has a touch screen which frankly I think is more trendy than functional. The touchpad is very intermittent regardless of the sensitivity setting you set. It's probably a variable capacitance pad just like the touchpads for your laptop. I hate those as well. I would love it if the buttons were just regular buttons.
The "Glowing" buttons and border on the device (esp when charging) are a neat flashy feature I think is quite amusing. The device also allows you to sync contacts and calendar items from outlook however the support is extremely limited in that you cant sync more than one PC (sucks for work/home people sharing contacts on two PC's) and it also doesn't support which fields to display for the contacts so you end up missing out on some of the contact names because they don't have a first/last name (i.e. companies).
Speed is good with the device, seems to transfer to and from well. Good volume, burn your ears out if you want.
I also picked up a Belkin TuneCast for use in the car. Not real happy with it. While it works getting a clear station is kind of tough. Works well enough I can play music in the car without burning to a CD.
Overall, it's a nice setup if your a music junkie.
