Creative Stone - a serious Shuffle contender?
I was planning on buying a Shuffle or a nano for my girlfriend in a few months to replace her old Creative Zen brick, but I just saw a review of the Creative Stone.
For about £20, you get 1Gb of space, shuffle sizing, and it works as a USB drive, so it will work on any Mac or PC. Ace.
Okay so it doesn't sync with iTunes, and it isn't aluminium, but at £20, it makes the shuffle look a bit pricey. Time for a slight Shuffle price drop?
For about £20, you get 1Gb of space, shuffle sizing, and it works as a USB drive, so it will work on any Mac or PC. Ace.
Okay so it doesn't sync with iTunes, and it isn't aluminium, but at £20, it makes the shuffle look a bit pricey. Time for a slight Shuffle price drop?
Comments
That would explain the lower price.
It doesn't sync with iTunes.
That would stop me from getting it.
It's plastic. It doesn't function as a clip. It's most likely not nearly as durable as the Shuffle.
That would explain the lower price.
It doesn't sync with iTunes.
That would stop me from getting it.
I'm surprised no one has made a driver to let a mass storage player to work with iTunes. Missing Sync does something like that for PDA devices.
The "stone" looks like a pretty large device too, take a look at the measurements. It looks like it might be larger than the old shuffle in volume.
So is £20 all she's worth to you?
Ha, well if it's £20, it leaves me money to spend on other things for her (or a new iMac for myself!)
In all seriousness, I still think a nano is a far better option, but I thought this looked like an interesting, useful and kind of cute product for the price - I don't think it's much bigger than the current shuffle.
But if you're used to that, and if you're looking for a cheap, who-cares-if-I-lose-it player, it looks better than most things out there.
Not being compatible with iTunes but rather using a drag-and-drop interface is a *plus* to many customers as they don't see the need for content management on such a simple player anyway. Of course it's a serious contender, whether it'll succeed, however, is another story, yet without an ending. A copy in concept? Yup (especially, considering what the Creative CEO had to say about the Shuffle when it launced).
Not being compatible with iTunes but rather using a drag-and-drop interface is a *plus* to many customers as they don't see the need for content management on such a simple player anyway.
If itunes isnt drag and drop, what is?
If itunes isnt drag and drop, what is?
With drag and drop I meant UMS. As in: shows up as an external drive on any modern operating system without any extra software.
Creative's own FAQ recommends renaming tunes with numbers in front of the name (001,002,003 etc) to get around this problem.
The ability to put music in "folders" that can be skipped is nice, but still to access them in the order you want, you'll have to use that clumsy filename numbering scheme.
With the iPod shuffle + iTunes, you can either sort tunes by albums, artists etc. but you can also set an arbitrary order. I used this extensively when I had a shuffle (I now have a nano). I used to put my favorites at the start and end of the playlist, so they could be easily accessed when triple-clicking the play button (that makes the playhead jump to the first tune in the list).
Edit:
BTW if you want to be able to copy songs on and off an iPod on any modern computer without installing extra software on the host, just put a program like YamiPod on the disk part of your iPod, and run it from there.
The big flaw in the Creative Stone is that it only plays music in alphanumeric order!
Creative's own FAQ recommends renaming tunes with numbers in front of the name (001,002,003 etc) to get around this problem.
Now that's lame. I think that's probably the price for having this thing be limited by not having a program manage what's on the device. I think you can do it by having a playlist file, but then, you still have to have a program to manage what's in that playlist, and worry about whether the items in the playlist are on the device.
The big flaw in the Creative Stone is that it only plays music in alphanumeric order!
Now that really is pants! Why anyone would consider it now is beyond me.
Now that really is pants! Why anyone would consider it now is beyond me.
ha, this story is going to blow your mind. last week my father bought my mom a creative zen V plus for her birthday. I asked him why the hell he would buy a piece of shit like that and how much it cost him. he replied by saying it was around 150 plus tax ( canadian ). i said why the hell didn't you get the nano, which is much more durable, and quality wise way better. and my father responded by saying, the person who he spoke to at futureshop told me that the creative zen was better. then i just laughed and said that the people who work at future shop must not know that much about electronics.
Creative Zen V Plus Features:
- Photo Viewer
- Video Viewer
- Music Player ( duh )
- and it works on the same sort of system as itunes would, with artists and albums and what not.
- Very small, sort of ugly, made out of plastic
iPod Nano
- Photo Viewer
- Music Player (duh)
- very nice and easy to use layout.
- Games ( solitaire, parachute, and brick )
- very small and thin, very nice looking, made out of aluminum.
Now the only difference between the two is that the creative zen has video capabilities, but who the hell would want to watch a video on a 1 inch screen.
Price difference, about 50 bucks, but i think the price difference is very reasonable to get a product with the quality of sound and feel as the nano has, compared to a piece of plastic.
All in all, i can understand getting the creative player if you don't have the money for the best, but 50 bucks isn't really all that much. If it was me in future shop that day, i would have gone straight for the nano and gotten that instead of the zen.
Thank you for reading my story.
Edit: the zen has a 2gb hard drive.