Touch vs. Nomad Jukebox (yes, the ORIGIN

Question

I am getting antsy and bored waiting for the Touch firmware to be released. I was looking for a game and saw my good ol' reliable blue nomad jukebox sitting on the shelf. I gave it good hug. For over fi've years that CD-player sized original HDD based MP3 player has gone everywhere with me. Until a few weeks ago when i bought a Zen Touch.
I scoured the net, comparing the Zens to iPods to Rios to Ri'vers. In the end, my personal experience (happy ) with creative made me choose the Touch in the end.
Everyone likes to compare the Touch to the iPod, calling it the "iPod killer." Well let me tell you something, oh my brothers, that overweight blue monster with its 6 hours of battery life is the Touch killer. Hell with why the Touch is better then the iPod, lemme tell you why the Nomad Jukebox (C, or DAP as you care to call it) is better than the Touch:
My current "listening on a daily basis" music library come in at about 3.5GB. That's music i like to hear every day. That's plenty to fit on a Jukebox, and obviously on a Touch as well</LI>
I'm out on a research farm for about 5-7 hours a day. Both the 6hr Jukebox and the 24hr Touch battery deli'ver.</LI>
The Jukebox has fully functional EAX settings, the Touch doesn't</LI>
With a set of surround headphones, i can have 4 channel surround on the Jukebox. Stereo only on the touch.</LI>
The Jukebox has a three band EQ with programmable crossover frequency. The touch has built in EQ and a faulty programable one.</LI>
The Jukebox has a tree structured queue list, and individual items can be removed or added. Nothing like that on the touch</LI>
Pushing UP/DOWN simultaneously allows quick scrolling, and there's a page up/page down function on the Jukebox - the lists also wrap so you can go from top to bottom easily. Scroll, wait, wait, and wait on the Touch. If you're at the bottom of a big playlist... well, forget it.</LI>
Play mode available directly from Current Track screen.</LI>
All i need is a microphone to record lectures on the Jukebox. The touch requires an external part to do that.</LI>
I choose what comes up when the jukebox starts, and what volume. That way i don't scream bloody murder going from my car to my headphones.</LI>
Tracks, artists, and albums starting with 'the' have 'the' ignored on the Jukebox. The Clarks is filed between Chumbawumba and Coldplay on the JB.</LI>
Sleep and wakeup timers on the Jukebox.</LI>
Hardware settings on the Jukebox let me choose between it running like a Beetle Diesel, getting 56 mpg, or a Ferrari Testerozza, and getting single digit mileage.</LI>
No "push me to play everything and screw up your playlist" button on the Jukebox.</LI>
What advantages does the Touch have over my Jukebox?
Higher SNR (98 vs 96 i think, cant find Jukebox spec)</LI>
Smaller</LI>
Better battery life</LI>
Promise of better firmware</LI>
I'm an audiophile-geeky-gadget guy. I own 99.98% the MP3's i have on my PC. NapsterToGo, Y!MU, amongst others are appealing to me, as i refuse to 'stick it to the man' by illegally pirating music. You say only the record industry is getting screwed over - don't forget the musicians have a paycheck too. Hoping for support, just like we got support when DRM first came to be for our JB's, our Zen's and such, i loyally bought your Touch. I even remember the combo beta/stable firmwares.
When a product that you made over fi've years ago has more features, functions, and capabilites than something you've released recently - that's quite a tradgedy.
I remember a bus ride sophmore year in HS, my first MP3 player. The night before i spent hours ripping the songs to the player until 5am. It was cool, people were amazed, i sold them on this "thing" that held every song that they owned. It was both 337 and Chic.
Now people see the Touch and ask, "is that the new iPod?"
I found that sales is like a marriage. You need a first impression, you need your customer to fall in love with the product, and you need to keep them interested as long as possible. Well, after fi've years... i want a divorce. I won't buy an iPod - Apple will lose share because of their control-freak nature on their products. But i won't be buying Creative products anytime soon, or even again.
This message was a bit of humor to begin with - i started fiddling with my JB this evening. Then it got me to thinking, what happened to the creative that used to post new drivers/firmwares/updates every week or so? Where'd they go?
Where's that old Creative Labs that was just that... Creative?
EDIT: I thought you might like to know that the FW on the JB is 4.0/2.98beta... the last dual boot beta creative put out. Still available on the Nomadness.net site
Message Edited by harikari on 07-26-2005 08:3 PM

Answer 1

harikari wrote:
When i first got my JB, it had battery life comprable to an iPod, about 2 hours. With the ability in later firmwares to tweak HD settings, i could extend it to about 6 with minor inconviences like load time and some gapping.
It depends on the files though. With 28kbit/s MP3s you would get about 4 hours, maybe more with higher capacity batteries.
At the time, the only other portable audio was CD, and think of how many people still have and use CD players. True it was a projectile weapon...
Actually I liked that its form factor was similar to a CD player. It meant getting cases was easy, although I went for the skin case.
And i liked the NiMH batteries, they could be used in anything, and they lasted much, much longer than alkaline. You know why the JB says "Use only Creative NiMH?" One, so you didn't recharge alkaline cells; two, alkaline cells ran the player for <EM>maybe</EM> and hour and a half, to
ps.
They were certainly worried about using the wrong batteries in it, although of course any NiMH batteries, ideally high capacity, work.
Oh, and i booted the JB and Touch (cold boot)... took about the same amount of time. Touch was a 'touch' faster.
Not if you add content to the NJB though. Every time you change content it has to rebuild the library.