Disappointment
Pros:
Excellent hardware manufacturing quality.
Cons:
Firmware has limited features and iTunes is a prison.
The Bottom Line:
Excellent hardware but its firmware has limitations. Consider Zen and Archos. MediaMonkey music organization software is way better than iTunes.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I used a Creative Nomad Zen Extra 30GB for over three years. I needed more space for my 13,000-song music collection (mostly MP3/VBR ~192kbps), and I want to see the full glory of color cover art. I use a fast PC with Windows XP and USB 2.0. Using Apple firmware 1.0.2.
First, the good news:
* I hold my entire 80GB music collection in the palm of my hand, with room to spare.
* Elegant design. Hardware fit and finish are excellent.
* The controls are fairly easy to operate.
* The music sounds great on headphones, stereo system, and in car.
* The color screen is bright and clear with high resolution (160dpi).
* Cover Flow is OK.
* Video display on iPod is pretty good.
* (With optional dock kit and component video cable) TV-out video display on TV is pretty good.
* Battery lasts a long time (>20 hours) for music play. Recharges quickly.
* Hundreds of accessories available.
Problems:
* The iPod 160GB cannot hold 160GB. It holds only 148.8GB.
* Slow to respond to controls (scroll wheel, buttons). +++
* Slow connect/eject. Takes 60 seconds to connect to a computer. Takes another 60 seconds to eject. +++
* TV-out disabled (unless you spend extra $ for apple dock). TV-out worked on previous iPod generations. This hurts some users and third party accessory manufacturers.
* Handles limited video formats.
* Screen and body are easy to scratch. Case is highly recommended. The eVo3 iSkin works great, if you cut out hole for control wheel.
* Apple attempted to make the iPod music database format closed to third-party applications, locking it to iTunes. Shame on you Apple.
* Album covers slow to appear. Due to that, in cover flow you often see a lot of blank covers. +++
* No custom EQ. +++
* There is no way to see each song's bit rate, year, comments. +++
* Can't use full display for cover art. +++
* Can't add to on-the-go playlist in Cover Flow. +++
* Can't zoom into photos or album covers. +++
* Menu button on Remote control in apple dock kit can't access menus. +++
* Difficult to tell exact battery charge state. +++
* Sometimes the iPod doesn't start charging when docked. +++
* Have to purchase optional FM headset for FM radio.
+++ I suppose we can hope that Apple will correct these deficiencies in a future firmware upgrade.
Apple's head has grown very large. Closing the file format to third party applications is hubris. Since Apple has welded iPod to iTunes, we have to discuss the shortcomings of iTunes:
* Not scalable. Very slow to handle largish libraries (over 8000 songs). It takes 5 minutes just to add one song to the iPod.
* While iTunes is churning away (sometimes for minutes), it says little or nothing about what it's doing. This opacity only makes the slow performance seem worse.
* iTunes' MP3 player clicks during play of some MP3/VBR tracks. Fortunately the iPod itself doesn't seem to have any problem with those same tracks.
* Handles cover art tagging in a non-standard way, possibly making it a huge chore to get cover art to display on the iPod.
MediaMonkey is a *much* better music organization app than iTunes. MediaMonkey 3.0 supports all iPods (They cracked the lock Apple put on iPod's music database). I am free, free, free of iTunes! MediaMonkey is much faster in organizing music and accessing the iPod, and it has a ton of other good features I won't hype here.
