Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox (Blue)

As soon as I found out Creative is releasing Jukebox, I had to buy it. I used to have Creative Nomad II. It was excellent to be honest. It had FM Radio, Voice recorder and MP3. As I used it more often, I was frustrated with the memory size and how much memory cost if you want more. Jukebox. It's no problem. Right now, I have 300 individual MP3 songs in there. It plays great and it sounds even better since this unit includes EAX. Preset EQ such as Stadium sound, Concert hall, and so on. Nomad II didn't have this before, so it made a huge difference in listening quality. I really love this player. I also found some problems with the player. It has a better software that handles MP3 Creative PlayCenter 2. But, its interface is a bit ... not intuitive. There are two screens to juggle. There is also no way to manage new MP3 songs from the old ones already inside your player. What I mean is when you only want to add a new song, you either have to remember the new songs or create a new folder and put all the new songs in there. The other thing is that you can not download songs from the player. I think you can only upload it if I am correct.(I maybe wrong.) Jukebox also uses USB to connect to your computer. It's fast, but occasionally it fails when you try to upload a lot of songs. It's not that big a problem, but the thing is that you don't know where you were dropped, so you have to figure out what songs were trasferred and not transferred. Jukebox, by the way,uses its own OS. When you try to do many things fast, it can crash. There is a reset button. It won't erase anything, but you need a very long needle like pin to reset it, but it wasn't supplied by the Creative, so when your jukebox crashes when you are on the road, you better have something sharp. Otherwise, you won't be able to use it. OS is also a bit ... again, not intuitive. It's a bit harder to navigate through the menu, and if you want to erase a song, there is no erase button like Nomad II, but instead, you will have to go through series of menu, then you will have to go back to the playlist to start playing again. Despite all these things, I still love this machine. To me, memory count a lot more than some system glitches. Only thing I hope is a remote. Possibly wireless remote. Jukebox has a Infrared interface beside the USB. So, there is some possibility that Creative will release it. If you don't carry around the unit often, this will help accessing songs from your couch.

My previous review of this product stated that this player was a fairly good buy. Not so anymore. It's simply too heavy, large and bulky. The main advantage this player has is it's rather large 6 GB capacity, which I never was able to fill. However, it's negatives outweigh the positives. After using it for a couple of months, the batteries stopped holding a charge, and would only give me a half hour or so of play time.The issues mentioned in my old review such as the inability to fast forward/rewind and inability to upload songs from the player have been resolved with recent firmware and software updates. The headphones are great, and they served me for a long, long time, even after I stopped using the Jukebox itself.In my opinion, it is a far better idea to purchase a portable CD player that is able to play MP3 CDs, such as a Sony MP3 CD discman. It's far cheaper, lighter and easier to use. However, you obviously need a burner to burn the MP3 CDs... or, go buy a newer generation of this product!OLD REVIEW --I just got the Creative Nomad Jukebox today (in blue!) and so far I absolutely love it. I even rollerbladed with it. True, it is a bit bulky, but thats only because it has a laptop hard drive inside it. And hey, it may drain the batteries (or so people say), but when I used it for my 30-45 minute roller blade trip, it served me well. The batteries didn't die on me, and it was almost fresh out of the box. The batteries hadn't even had much charging yet. I don't have any idea why the people are complaining about the headphones and the volume settings. The headphones are comparable to the Sony Backphones, which are probably the greatest lightweight headphones ever made. The headphones are a bit tight out of the box, but I'm sure they will loosen with time. As for the volume issue, you've got to be either deaf, or standing in the middle of a busy airport runway if it's not loud enough for you. The annoying things about it are: 1. The lack of fast forward/rewind functions 2. The large size (about the size of a Sony Discman player) 3. The delicate state of the player (Although I haven't done this, I don't think a Hard Drive would survive a fall) 4. The player's software doesn't allow you to download songs from the player into the computerThe positive features are: 1. SUPERIOR sound quality 2. Tons of EAX settings, and other sound settings. 3. EXTREME capacity. I dont think I will ever be able to fully use up the 6 gigabyte capacity of this great MP3 player. 4. Comes with an AC adapter. 5. Comes with a leather carry case. 6. The super-fast file transfer time. You can load a whole album on this baby in under 3 minutes. My old Parallel Port MP3 player took 15 minutes for about 3-4 songs. 7. The player comes preloaded with hours of music of different genres, including Pop, Classical, Rock and Electronica.All and all, the positives outweigh the negatives. Of course, you could wait for a better player, but why? [Thats my way of thinking ;-) ]