CREATIVE LABS NOMAD JUKEBOX: If they really LOVE Music...

I bought this product for a friend. My friend loves music so much they spend an inordinate amount of time downloading song after song from the net. Yes it is an important friend and yes it was relatively expen$ive. But my friends and their happiness are pretty important to me.

The Jukebox is a revolutionary little thing, as you can imagine. 6 gigs of space---enough for over a hundred CD's in one little device the size of a portable CD player. I wish my computer had that much storage space! But talk about versatile! And what a huge amount of stuff it can hold. Downloading is a snap, and a fast one at that.

Drawbacks? Yeah, everybody wants to steal it from my friend. For obvious reasons.

Actually there are a couple of things. For one, sorting songs into playlists is a drag (and I don't mean drag and drop either.) Second, there should be a way to upload all the music that comes with it onto a hard disk or other storage medium so you can save it if you want the space it takes up. And the biggie is the battery situation. It eats a lot of power to do its thing and so you better be ready for frequent recharging. Also one of the battery sets that came with it seemed anemic but the second set worked just fine. It is supposed to work with alkaline batteries but so far none have worked. But that ONE set of rechargables that came with it works just fine.

I have the feeling that this is a sort of "beta" machine for a new revolution in MP3 players. "Beta" machines are always a little buggy, so you'll hear some gripes. But overall, the killer application factor on this little baby makes it the king of the hill for a long time to come.

This kind of machine will become standard one of these days and the price will drop. Till then, it's a great "new thing" to start the new century with-- with enough music to last till the next one rolls around.