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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Innovation with flaws, October 28, 2002
I have owned the Nomad 3 (40 GB) for a few months now and have praise for the innovations with a LiIon battery and a fat drive, the firewire/USB ports and the recording feature. However, there are significant drawbacks with this device that I believe have to do with human factors and make me look elsewhere for a better solution. In a nutshell, Creative's device is beautifully and innovatively engineered, but stupidly designed in terms of software, form factor and user interface, due to an apparent lack of usability awareness at Creative's design team. More specifically:- It is not possible without extra software to connect the player and simply use it as external harddisk, which is possible with most other players on the market - a major drawback.
- The player sometimes locks up and needs a reset or battery removal.
- Disk access is rather slow and playback typically incurs some startup delay.
- The bulky discman form of the player may make it familiar to nontechnical users but is neither handy nor practical. Several times I have almost dropped the player because of its rounded shape and placing it on a car console other than flat is not possible.
- The second battery options reminds of "razor-blade" extra moneymaking - why not make the device smaller or offer one large built-in battery?
- The jog wheel favors right-handed people - a crosshair or wheel-based user interface in the front middle would have been more practical - see ipod design.
- The recording feature is very limited - the input level is not variable and a mic input would have been essential.
- The PC software for the player is non-intuitive and the creation of playlists largely useless, because shuffle play cannot be chosen just for a specific playlist and applies by default only to all loaded songs.
- The currently played track is only shown when pressing the info button twice.
- The player plays by default only a single track in normal mode and then stops.
- The search feature is rather primitive, largely due to the low-res display. MP3/WMA (etc.) playback and recording on a high-capacity small-format player is a promising market and I do wonder how much longer it will take for companies to step beyond intentional "deficiency engineering" and present a compact device with an intelligent and practically designed user interface. Apple is closer in many terms but the lack of recording and copy capabilities makes the ipod a consumer toy rather than a tool.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE MP3 Player, December 21, 2003
Let me start this review by saying that I cannot possibly explain just how much I like the NOMAD 3. Having said that, let me explain just how much I like the NOMAD 3. This player is unbelievable...everything a music-lover needs. I don't want to ramble on about all of its features, besides, there's too many (and they're all listed on Amazon). Maybe the best feature of this player is its upgradability (besides the sound quality, wheel button interface, I could go on...). For example, look back at all the other reviews that have been written on it, and focus on all the negatives. Now, forget the negatives, because the NOMAD 3's latest firmware upgrades solve these problems! When I first bought the NOMAD 3, I was dissapointed by it's lack of a graphic equalizer...I figured an equalizer would be essential in a player like this. After a few months, however, Creative Labs announced a new upgrade...and guess what? Now my player has an on-screen 4-band graphic equalizer! I'm already looking forward to the next upgrade! Transferring songs is easier than you might think. Hook the NOMAD to your computer, and the file-transferring software automatically opens. The screen is divided into two windows, with selectable sources of music for each (for example, CD track listing on the left, NOMAD 3 track listing on the right). Simply select the tracks you want to copy from the CD, hit "Transfer", and that's it!! For the inexperienced, let me give you an idea of how much music this thing holds. My player is a little over half full. If I load up all the tracks, and set it to "shuffle", I could listen to no-repeat music for 27 days. Non-stop. Finally, I can safely say this is the last MP3 player (or any kind of music player, for that matter) that I will ever buy. Ever. This is my second one (my first was destroyed, long story)...and if anything ever happened to it, I would be right back here that day to order another one.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Forget iPod, This Is The Real Deal, December 10, 2003
I purchased my Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 almost a year ago in January of 2003. Before that I had a Creative Nomad Jukebox C refitted with a 30GB hard drive that I bought on eBay. I was looking to upgrade since the battery life of the Jukebox C was pretty terrible. The Jukebox 3 I purchased was refitted with a larger 60GB hard drive. The first noticible difference is the battery life. At close to 22 hours of continuous play, EVERY OTHER MP3 PLAYER BECOMES OBSOLETE! Of course this will fluctuate depending on your backlight settings and such. I was very hesitant of the side scrolling wheel since the Jukebox C came with up and down arrow buttons. After getting used to using the scroll wheel I am convinced nothing else is better. Driving down the Autobahn in Germany and being able to locate and play artists and albums with one hand while driving 130KPH is a godsend. As of now I have 10,000 songs, 40284MB on my Jukebox 3. The user interface software, Creative Playcenter, is very user friendly. I initially used Firewire but had some problems so I only use the USB interface now. I think it is only 1.1 speed, though it is noticibly faster than loading songs to the Jukebox C. I have had a few problems connecting to Playcenter, but nothing that can't be solved with patience. I was impatient once and found some different Third-Party software called NOTMAD. This NOTMAD software allows the user to use a drag and drop interface like Windows Explorer as well as transfer regular computer files, a feature NOT allowed by Creative Playcenter for the Jukebox 3. I prefer using Playcenter and using cut/paste to input Artist and Album information. Using the Jukebox 3 to play songs or albums is very easy. Anyone who rides in my car can learn to use it very quickly. I don't use the playlist option that much, but it was easy to make a playlist. I heard an ugly rumor that the iPod can only utilize playlists made on the computer and is unable to make playlists on the iPod itself. There is one detractor to the Jukebox 3 which starts to occur when around 8,000 are loaded onto it. There is a utility called "rebuilding library" which starts when you turn on the Jukebox 3 within 24-48 hours after loading new songs. This can happen with as little as adding 2 albums. From my understanding this utility is much like defragmenting the hard drive, moving the bits of information closer to the middle of the hard disk. This utility takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete and has the backlight on so it is best to have your battery adapter plugged in when this occurs. You can manually initiate this along with other utilities by using the included manual (but who reads those?) I only note this as a detractor because unless you manually initiate it after loading new songs, it will self-initiate within 24-48 hours at the most inopportune times like Trans-Atlantic flights, long road trip in Germany. Yes i am bitter. I use my Jukbox 3 every single day so this bugs me when it happens. Support for the Jukebox 3 is outstanding. Updates to all drivers and firmware are easy to locate based on model and operating system on the Creative website. The physical durability of the Jukebox 3 is outstanding. My Jukebox 3 has been all over Europe, trips back to the States, Saudi Arabia and more recently Iraq. In especially dry or dusty environments I try to keep it covered and/or enclosed as much as possible. It has dropped a few times, once on a hard tile floor, and never skipped! The scroll wheel has held up great, I foresee this as a possible problem in the far future. An important note is operation in cold environments. DO NOT LEAVE OUTSIDE OR IN A CAR OVERNIGHT IN A COLD ENVIRONMENT! When you turn it on the next morning it'll be slow and the screen will look like it is broke. I paid $600 for mine so I baby it so it will last for a long time. In short, the battery life is the best out there at nearly 22 hours. Support, usability, durability are 1st class in my opinion. As i stated before, I paid $600 for a refitted 60GB Jukebox 3. So the price you pay for any Jukebox 3 model now is a steal. Hope this is more a helpful review than a sales pitch. Enjoy!
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