http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/ Engadget Comments for http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 9:07AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
no wonder creative are refocusing on ipod accessories lol]]>May 3rd 2007 9:08AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/---------
Apparently it's a Mass Storage-Class (MSC) device for music, so the fact that you can drag n drop music onto it without clucky software is a plus over the iPod Shuffle, IMO. Design seems decent with its rounded corners, too.

Of course no removable batt or flash is sub-par, but expected, unfortunately.


From the FAQ:
http://au.creative.com/GetStarted/ZENStone/faqs.asp#faq_0_13
14. Can I use my player as a portable data storage device?

Yes, you can. Your player is recognized as a removable disk by your computer. You can use Windows Explorer to transfer files (including music tracks) to your player. Please note that copy protected WMA files will not play on your player if they were transferred using Windows Explorer.]]>May 3rd 2007 9:34AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 9:34AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 9:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 9:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
And all this nonsense about "no need for clunky software" ... iTunes isn't the clunky software - it's the other guys'.

and seriously - who the heck still organizes their music collection without some sort of music database program?

____
http://twibe.com]]>May 3rd 2007 11:56AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 9:45AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 5th 2007 3:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 9:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 9:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 12:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 10:01AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
Seriously, Creative once again made a better player than Apple, and get dissed by the Apple lovers.]]>May 3rd 2007 10:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 10:16AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
Haha!

http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/12/creatives-ceo-disses-the-ipod-shuffle-thems-fightin-words/

He said

We're expecting a good fight but they're coming out with something that's five generations older. It's our first generation MuVo One product feature, without display, just have a (shuffle feature). We had that — that's a four-year-old product. So I think the whole industry will just laugh at it, because the flash people — it's worse than the cheapest Chinese player. Even the cheap, cheap Chinese brand today has display and has FM. They don't have this kind of thing, and they expect to come out with a fight; I think it's a non-starter to begin with.]]>May 3rd 2007 10:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/]]>May 3rd 2007 10:07AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
"We" refers to Creative and the paragraph I posted came from the CEO of Creative.]]>May 3rd 2007 10:21AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
By the way, MSC?? What is this, 2000? You really want to drag files from your hard drive to a player?? That is REALLY easier than smart-tagging and automatic syncing? Is this in the same universe where WMA is a viable codec and market?]]>May 3rd 2007 10:17AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/-----------
Absolutely. Do you really want to load software on every machine you have just so you can get music on or OFF it? (which Apple, for instance, doesn't let you do?). Music should be treated just like data files.

If you want, you can also load Creative's software if you want more. Great thing is it's not mandatory to load the software just to get music on there. Bring it to any computer and virtually any OS and get your music on and off it. They way it should be, IMO.]]>May 3rd 2007 10:28AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
This thing looks great in black. No iPod can compete with it (and that's quite a lot, I like Apples design). Now if the other Creatives would look as good as the Stone... I wouldn't want to miss a display, but some people don't mind, even I somehow. Most of the time I'm only using the remote of my player.]]>May 3rd 2007 12:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
wait, there is such a player exist. it is the ipod shuffle. just my view. and i am not a window or creative or apple fanboy since i own stuff and use stuff from all three company.]]>Jun 24th 2007 1:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
still tryin to find out who we is??]]>May 3rd 2007 10:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4216308.html]]>May 3rd 2007 10:20AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 10:30AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 10:24AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 10th 2007 10:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
http://www.mobibluamerica.com/cube2.html

Oled display, pendant style, FM, MSC.

Some people (myself included), would not buy player w/o MSC. We like to organize our own songs in folders. Don't need something like ITunes that renamed all of our files and putting them all over.

Guess it is like people who like Unix/Linux vs. WinXP vs. OSX. I can't live w/o a prompt.]]>May 3rd 2007 10:29AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 10:30AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 10:35AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
http://sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1226)-SanDisk_Sansa_Express_MP3_Players.aspx

OLED, FM, microSD expandable.

3.1 x 1.0 x .65 in
(78.74 x 25.4 x 16.51mm)

vs (zen stone)

53.67 x 35.34 x 12.82 mm
]]>May 3rd 2007 10:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 10:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
In other words, the buying public?
]]>May 3rd 2007 10:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 10:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/oh yes thats right creative came out first how does that make them stupid!!!]]>May 3rd 2007 11:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Communism is also great right? Who needs freedom when you can be told what to do!]]>May 3rd 2007 11:06AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
like who dumb people!

too dumb to know what an mp3player is!!!]]>May 3rd 2007 11:23AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 11:31AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
In real life, USB and drag'n'drop capability is what matters. Compatibility is what counts!

If I want to get a song from a friend (I have two friends with recording studios in their homes) or if I want to move music to or from my Fedora machine, my wife's winXP MCE laptop, or my 10-year-old's Ubuntu machine, or whatever (we have a mac mini too) I don't want to putz around with loading drivers, fighting DRM, or loading iTunes or WinAMP. I just want to move the music, I don't want to load and maintain software. It's supposed to be a tool; I don't want to have to forge a hammer in order to drive a nail!

The Zen player is our favorite, but only because the chinese cheapie has limited memory. If it had as much storage as the Zen we'd all like it best - it shows up as a USB stick on any OS or hardware.

]]>May 3rd 2007 11:35AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/dangerous things can happen like realizing that ipods are old news!!!]]>May 3rd 2007 11:44AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
iPods will be the king of the heap for a long time, deal with it. IF you are concerned about inferior products being more popular than superior versions, I sure hope you aren't using Windows!

you know you have a secret man-crush on Steve Jobs, just admit it.]]>May 3rd 2007 12:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 12:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 12:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 12:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
It's necessary because Windows is worse. It has no features for tagging or even labeling. Most of all, MS treats everything differently. The mail app wasn't integrated with Windows after the first version, the calendar app came separately between Win95 and WinXP, and the music software is this huge monstrosity, even though there are extensions to view music files in explorer. It's this huge labyrinth that most people simply can't use efficiently.

If all you have is a shuffle or pebble or whatever this is called, maybe you have so little music that dragging and dropping is ok. But for most of us, I don't think it works. Having software that randomly selects music to load is perfect, actually.]]>May 3rd 2007 12:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
What, exactly, are you on? Windows Media Player isn't their "music" program, it's a full media suite, capable of video and audio playback, device syncing, music store integration and online streams. For Apple, you need iTunes, a lumbering hulk of a music database, and QuickTime, something that attempts pretty much every time it boots up to highjack associated media types to be defaulted to itself, to do that. No thanks. I'll stick with WMP, and if I felt like changing, I would just set it as a restricted program on the system by simply going to the Start Menu and clicking "set program access and defaults"--I know, huge step.

As for the "labyrinth" of the OS, yeah, huge labyrinth, seeing as the "My Music" folder is defaulted to display the list of songs in "details" columns view so you can sort by artist, song name, track, album, genre, year or whatever else you feel like throwing in there. Tags and labels aren't an invention of iTunes, they're integrated into the .mp3 format. You can edit them from Explorer, or you can do it in Windows Media Player by point-and-click on the tag you want to edit. Yes, so hard.

What do you take people for?]]>May 3rd 2007 2:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/be original in life be your self
dont just be another gimp to jobs propganda to the western world the apple is best
when its clearly not!]]>May 3rd 2007 12:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 6:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/
The stone may look like a decent shuffle alternative at a glance, but at that price point they are cutting corners somewhere. It may be in the firmware support, customer support, or the quality of plastics and molding they are using, or the physical button connectors, the manufacturing tolerances, etc. etc. Really, its a combination of these effects.

These are the details that [when compromised] make a product feel cheap, and these are the same details that Apple scrutinizes, and obsesses over until their product gleams by comparison.

When you analyze the minutia of each player side by side, you can see the attention to detail that Apple puts in their products. How do the various materials interface? What finish have they used? How do the button switches feel? How is the weight distributed? How do the ports work? How tight are the manufacturing tolerances? Apple agonizes over these details while the competition contracts the stuff out.

Consumers may be fat, stupid, ugly, whatever, but they pick up on these details instantly. When they have a Stone and a Shuffle sitting next to each other at Best Buy, they can see and feel the differences between the products, and that also has an effect on their buying decisions.

Apple spends a ton of money/time/resources on their design. Their products cost a lot more to manufacture. But, they also charge high prices and have nice fat margins on their iPods. It is clearly a winning strategy, and one that the competition either can't, or refuses to emulate.

Having worked with and around thousands of iPods, I was literally stunned the first time I held a Zune. I had no idea it was put together so poorly; you can't really tell from the pictures. ]]>May 3rd 2007 1:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/03/creative-shuffles-out-tiny-zen-stone/May 3rd 2007 1:50PM