Stephen’s Blog

A few pictures of Colin around 7-8 months.

Colin in his new car seat.

Colin attempting to pull up.

I am finally breaking down and buying a new computer. Or rather buying the parts to a new computer that I will be assembling. This is what I have ordered so far.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
2 GB DDR 400 RAM
Antec SLK3800B Mid Tower Case
Samsung 940b 19 inch LCD
NVidia Geforce 6600GT Video Card
2 x 200GB Western Digital Hard Drives
Lite-On DVD Burner
Logitech Keyboard and Mouse.

MSI MotherBoard delayed…. But it shouldn’t be more than a day or two behind the rest.

This past June I bought Creative Lab’s Zen Micro as an early birthday present. The reason for it being early was so that I could use it on our vacation. And use it I did. Not quite as much as I had planned, but it worked as intented when I used it.

Now that was four months ago. Since then I have gone through spurts of using it daily to not touching for two or three days. Lately it has seen daily use at work. So, I feel comfortable giving a short review.

Pros:

• Size
• Sound
• Ear-Phones
• Price
• Capacity

Cons

• Battery Life*
• Control Sensitivity*

For me the litmus test for size in a portable electronics device (phone, mp3 player, etc..) is whether or not you can store it in a pocket and still know it is there without it being bothersome. Most of the mp3 players I have been able to handle fit that bill and the Zen is no different. I have yet to hold a ipod nano so I don’t know it fares in my own personal test. I would not be suprised if some day Apple designed a hard-drive based mp3 player that failed my test for being too small and light. The shuffle already fails but it is flash-memory based.

Moving on, I have been very pleased with the audio output quality especially with the included ear buds. That is one area that I feel Creative out does Apple. My wife owns a shuffle and I have had several opportunities to spend time listening to music on it. When I received the Zen Micro I was a little supprised by the quality of the sound produced by the Creative ear buds as compared with the Apple ear buds. The Creative ear buds even compare favorably with my $30 headphones that I use at work.

At the current $179 price you can’t go wrong with the Zen . A comparable offering storage-wise from Apple in the 4GB Nano is $250. To be fair the Nano comes with a color LCD and is extremely small. A better comparison might be the 4GB ipod minis that can be found at sub $200 prices from online retailers .

If you own a battery operated electronic device there has been a moment where you wished the battery in said electronic device lasted longer. To be honest I don’t really think the Zen Micro’s battery life is all that bad. I certainly haven’t done a scientific study testing the battery life. So, when I list battery life as a negative, simply chalk that one to natural human response.

Another mild negative is the sensitivity of the touchpad on the Zen Micro. If you read the manual or mess around with it enough you discover there is a user controled setting that allows you to raise or lower the sensitivity of the controls. Even after setting this if you have clammy hands like me you might have the occasional menu stutter.

Overall, I have to give the Zen Micro two thumbs up. Is it the mp3 player for you? That depends on personal peference and whether or not you want to be able to play wma files. Of course right now I still appear to be in the minority by choosing Creative.