Creative Technology Nomad Jukebox (6 GB) MP3 Player

Everyone needs a new toy every now and then. Whether your toy of choice is a sportscar, a new kitchen appliance, a power tool, more stereo equipment, or an upgrade for your computer, I would wager that for just about anyone, there's a particular kind of material object that brings you enjoyment. Sure, it may not be the same kind of wholesome, all-encompassing joy that some would argue that money can never buy, but a new toy can certainly be a whole lot of fun.

The Nomad Jukebox is brought to us by the folks over at Creative Labs. Those of you who are not new to the computer world may remember Creative for their many innovations with their SoundBlaster cards -- back when computer sound for many consisted totally of the few annoying tones produced by an external PC spearker. I purchased my Nomad Jukebox quite recently, and I must admit that I'm pretty impressed with it. The breakthrough concept offered by the Nomad Jukebox over other MP3 players is that it uses a hard drive, rather than memory, to store your files. As a result, you can store an amazing amount of music (6 GB, or 150 albums, if you believe Creative's advertising materials) on one of these babies.

Although there are some other negatives to be considered before buying the Nomad Jukebox (e.g., relatively short battery life, length of time to transfer files to and from the unit) I think that for most people the single biggest issue will end up being price. Based on my research, one can expect to pay around $300 for one of these. At Amazon.com, Best Buy, Buy.com, Creative's own website, and other places, I found the Nomad Jukebox priced at $299.99. In fact, I wasn't able to find this product priced any lower than about $290 anywhere except for the occasional auction. Even on eBay, while many products can be found for a fair amount below retail price with some careful searching, I wasn't able to find Creative Labs' Nomad Jukebox for much less than the $300 pricetag I mentioned earlier. In fact, the best deal I found on a new Nomad Jukebox in the retail box was the open box one I purchased at Best Buy for $269.

If you've done any research on the Nomad Jukebox, you may have heard rumblings about a newer 20 GB version. Actually, as far as I've been able to discern, there is no such retail item available at this time. The 20 GB units on the market are simply 6 GB ones with the internal hard drive switched out for a small notebook drive with a larger capacity. The one I've seen most frequently is of the IBM TravelStar variety. I've also seen a 30 GB one which uses a hard drive manufactured by Toshiba. The Nomad's firmware is then installed on the new hard drive, and an image of the files which were downloaded from the old drive are also typically copied to the new one.

At any rate, there are some major problems with "upgrading" the capacity for of your Jukebox. First of all, I've come across many accounts of various people who tried to do this and were somewhat less than successful. There are several websites out there which will give you the information you supposedly need to complete the upgrade succesfully, but they, of course, offer no guarantee that your player will work properly after the procedure is over. The fact that there is no immediately obvious way to get at the hard drive inside the Nomad Jukebox is a little detail that leads me to believe that it's probably not the best idea to go tinkering around inside. Not being an electrical engineer or anything of the sort, I'm not entirely sure what limitations the player might have that could prevent it from working properly with a different hard drive installed.

Finally, any such attempt at increasing the storage space of your unit by switching out the hard drive will void its manufacturer's warranty. Aside from the obvious fact that this whole procedure seems like quite a pain to complete, it just doesn't seem like voiding the manufacturer's warranty a $300 item is the smartest thing I could do. Call me crazy, but it just doesn't sound like a good idea.

At this point in the review, you're probably expecting me to wrap things up with an amazingly insightful summary and the final word as to whether or not you should purchase the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox. Unfortunately, that's one question that I can't answer for you. As I hope I've outlined to your satisfaction, the Nomad Jukebox is a pretty impressive, if somewhat flawed, product which I've found myself enjoying quite a bit at times. Other times, however, I think that I might enjoy to an even greater degree the $270 I would get back by returning it to the store.

What it really boils down to is how important the concept offered by this product is to you. Does the ability to carry around thousands of songs on an item the size of a CD player set off something inside of you? Does the Nomad Jukebox sound like the portable audio product you've been waiting for all your life? If so, then this product may just be worth it for you. Like I said, though, that's not a question I can answer for you -- I still haven't quite figured that out for myself.