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My shiney new Creative Zen arrived today, after the 4 hour initial power charging session I started trying to transfer tracks to the player. All the mp3 files copied as expected but my m3u Winamp playlist files were ignored with the device stating it was an unsupported file type. That sucks since I have hundreds of m3u playlists. I found that the sync tool does the playlist convertion but it means I have to copy the music to my system (from my server) into the sync directory and then manually initiate a sync. It's not too bad but it does double the file copying time and add a small bit of complexity to the process. On the bright side it does mean all my playlist files are still useful

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Edit:

Several gripes with the Creative Sync and ZEN Media Explorer applications.

• If it bums out on a playlist then it stops processing any playlists after that point but continues copying tracks. This means you then have to manually browse the Zens HDD and delete the copied tracks.
• It seems to bum out if the playlist points to the wrong location for a track. Should mean simply correcting the playlist and restarting the sync, which leads to the next gripe!
• If you delete a directory out of your sync directory it does not get deleted off the Zen. You have to browse through the Zens HDD and manually delete the directory, same goes for the playlist
• There is no sync directory for the Zens playlists.
• Doesn't warn you if you start copying more data than the device can hold. It just fills it up until it can't fit anymore and then prompts you that the device is full.
• Can't select network drives when choosing directories to import via Media Explorers "Add Media" option. The "Manage Playlists" option in Media Explorer only lets you create playlists for tracks already on the ZEN. You can't make playlists for tracks on your hard drive such as in your actual music sync directory.
• Syncronising contact information only works with Outlook, from the drop down it states "Windows Contacts". Doesn't seem to work with Windows Live Mail contacts which is what I use.

Edit #2:

Doesn't say much when I suffer from the "Dreaded White Screen Of Death" the second time I ever use the player out on the street. For the uninitiated; the white screen of death has plagued several models of Creative MP3 player. It basically means that the screen turns white when you turn the unit on. You can't see anything except white and turning it on and off doesn't help. Luckily I was leaving a clients when it happened so I quickly googled it and found an instant fix via google. All you have to do is hold down the "Play" button, then pull the power button downwards so it covers the blue light. Keep it held there for 10 seconds or so, whilst still keeping play held down. Then release both and it should be back to a normal screen. If not turn it off and try the previous procedure from the off state and then turn it on. It worked for me and I haven't had it again yet.

Another annoyance is that the player resumes playing the last song/album when you turn it on, that's great, but, there's always a but with this device, but when you do press the "Back" button it takes you to the top level and highlighted the radio or mic menu item, not the music one even though that was moved to the top of the list earlier. Petty annoyance but you have to keep scrolling back up to music and then the playlist selection. It should take you back to the playlist selection screen or whatever Music subscreen you where on when you turned it off, well not on it but it should correctly remember the back history between uses.

Edit #3:

The Zen takes a SD memory card, I haven't actually found anywhere which states the maximum card capacity it can read. I'm looking at some 16GB cards at the moment and thought I'd test out the Zen with one of my current SD cards to see how it works. I used a small 256MB card with two albums copied onto it. I had to use one of my card readers to get the files onto the memory card as it doesn't seem to be accessable via either Windows Explorer or the Zen Explorer. On the Zen under the "Memory Card" menu there is an option titled "Removable Disk" this indicates that you should plug your Zen in to your computer via USB and you will then be able to access the memory card. Didn't work for me. Zen Explorer said it was loading an alternative interface because of the memory card, then it loaded the same interface as before with no way of accessing the directory structure. Total fail there Creative.

Sooooo once I'd manually copied my two test albums to the stick and inserted it into the Zen it was time to explore. Neither of the Winamp playlists show up in the "Playlists" screen and neither of the new albums showed up in any of the lists. Seems the only way to play music off the memory card is to go to "Memory Card"->"Browse" then pick an album directory and then tap play on the first track. As long as the tracks are suitably named it will play them in filename based alphabetical order.

That's not too bad, it's pretty much exactly how I had to use my old Samsung MP3 player. If the 16GB card works then I'll put all my favorite albums on that and then put the "every once in a while" ones on the Zens built in memory.

All in all it seems that Creative tried to be too fancy with the Zen. It would be alot better if they did away with the propriatary playlist format and got rid of the Zen Explorer. It should just let you browse the player like a removable disk, copying and pasting albums simply as directories. The additional memory card could then be seen as a secondary drive. Seems alot simpler than what they "attempted" to implement.

Edit #4:

Bought a 16Gb Kingston SD4/16GB SDHC Memory card for £25.99 from scan.co.uk, it's well fast copying to and from the card directly from the PC. Afterwhich it works fine in the Zen. There is a warning message each time you do "Browse" or "Information" under the "Memory Card" option on the menu. It says something about how the data may be corrupt and then gives a yes/no option. Picking yes leads it to read the memory card and then you're away. There appears to be no way to disable that particular error message.

Edit #5:

Keep getting the White Screen o Death. This is when you turn on the device and the screen is totally white. You can't do anything and when you shut it off and turn it back on it's still all white. The trick to this is quite simple. Turn it off. Hold down the Play/Pause button and turn the device back on. Keep the Play/Pause held down until you see the firmware menu. There are several options here such as formatting the memory etc. The one we want is Reboot. This will restart the device after which it should work just as it did before. I have to do this about once a month as I keep getting the white screen. It seems to be something to do with the devices quick boot functionality. Say you turn the device off but then turn it back on 10 minutes later. It seems to jump back to where you last were very quickly. Much quicker than if you turned it on 3 hours later. Hope this helps some folk as I know alot of people return the device because they can't get out of the white screen.

Edit #6:

If you are playing an track off the built in memory and turn the player off then it resumes from the last point you listened to it when you turn it back on. If you are listening to a track on the SD card and turn it off then when you turn it on you end up on the main menu and have to navigate back down to your SD based album/track and play it again. Well annoying when you just want to turn it on and go.

On my old player I had a "Misc" directory where I just lumped random tracks I really liked. Select that directory and put the player to random so it jumps around tracks in that directory. On the Zen which cost 4 times as much as my old player you can't do random like that. You can set it to randomly play tracks off the built in memory, but only random tracks from every album on the device, not just within one album.

Also; tonight I noticed that you can't actually browse the directories on the built in memory like you can with the SD card. I did a sync with my Misc track directory and all the tracks copied over just fine. Because I don't have a playlist for them I had no way of accessing those tracks besides doing a By Artist/By Album etc type thing which is crap for a Misc directory since all the tracks are by different people off different albums.

This leads to yet another gripe. You can't make playlists on the actual device [editors note: Chris points out that I was wrong and you can make playlists on the device. See the first comment below this post]. You have to make the playlist on your PC and then sync it onto the device. That meant there was truly no way to play a Misc directory of tracks without using the SD card. So I took out the SD card, put it in my SD-to-USB adapter and copied the tracks onto there. Then it works as I want i.e. I can browse to that folder on the SD card and play tracks from there. All hunky dorey till I turn it off. Then I'm back to the issue of having to browse to that directory again when I turn the device on.

The Creative Zen is the worst MP3 player I have ever owned. I've had an MP3 player that had a 2 line black and white display with only one button/lever to navigate. It totally thrashed the Zen when it comes to usability. The only downside was the memory capacity. Even though the Zen is still fairly new and not broken I think I'm going to look for a new MP3 player. This one just pisses me off every single time I use it. I shouldn't be surprised at the crapiness of their MP3 player. I'm one of the suckers that bought a Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty soundblaster cards. When it works it's great but I have had a few instances where it has totally gone cakka to the point that only an OS re-install would solve it. Technical support was dire, they would swap it but only for an inferior model and I had to send mine back first meaning I'd be without a soundcard for two weeks.

Creative - we make shit hardware but wrap it in a pretty package. Never again Creative, the only way you're getting more money off me in the future is by prying it from my cold dead fingers, my death of couse being attributed to the high blood pressure caused by the frustration your devices create.

Edit #7:

Stupid friggin thing. I noticed my last set of headphones seemed to be quite finnicky with the angle or rotation you had them jacked in by. They cost £20 and then broke within about a month. I bought some more Gummy headphones from Amazon. Same weird problem with the headphone jack. The problem is that the sound is all distant and tinny. You can't hear voices at all. It takes a bit of wiggling the cable head until it sounds OK.

I realised this couldn't be due to the actual headphones since it was happening with two pairs. Upon closer inspection of the actual headphone jack I can see it's all rusty and green inside. This means the contacts are all shot.

I wear my MP3 player when I'm skating around town as well as bus travelling etc. Pretty much anytime I'm out of the house travelling I will be wearing it. Long or fast skates will tend to make me a tad sweaty. My hunch is that my sweat has killed the headphone jack. I've never had this problem with any other MP3 player.

I'm not totally sure what to do at this point. I want to buy a HTC HD2 phone or one of the new ones coming out in that family. I'll be using the MP3 player built into that but until then I'm stuck with the Zen. I'm worried that if I try and clean it then it will totally break.

On a sidenote. I bought the official see-through protective case at the same time as I bought the zen. That's crap because for one, it traps sweat or steam inside the case. That means each time I take it off I have to take the player out of the case, clean the player and clean the inside of the case. Pretty lame since cleaning it means being ultra careful not to scrach the player front and the case. Defeats the point of the case. Well except for the fact that you need the case to be able to wear the player around your neck since there is nowhere to attach a strap to the actual player itself. So I guess what I'm saying is that the player itself is lame but also the official accessories are equaly as lame.

Final Edit: The End Of The Zen
So I finally had enough of my Zen. That was many months a go now but I just had an email asking me what I did in the end. When my last phone died from me drunkenly throwing it on the floor too many times, I decided it was time to try out a Windows Mobile device. I spent a while picking one out, something important to me was a phone with a 3.5mm headphone jack so I could use any old headphones with it. I settled on the HTC HD2 phone. I really like it, definitely my favourite phone so far. Saying that, I am going to get a Windows Phone 7 device in the next few months, just waiting for the first update to be released and the second range of phones to be out.

I quickly stopped using the stock rom on the phone as it was a bit boring. Instead I use the Energy GTX ROM which is well nice and comes with a load of pre-installed goodies. I don't use the built in music player as it does not support playing directories of music. Well it sort of does and it doesn't, it relies on you having accurate meta tag data for all your tracks which I don't. I'm getting there with the help of MP3Tag but it takes time. In the meantime I'm using Nitrogen a free music player that does everything I want.

Whilst all of that is nice and dandy I have had a few problems with the phone which I've detailed in this post. Now that's all sorted out I'm a very happy chappy and will probably not buy another standalone MP3 player again. After many years of using them, probably talking over 10 years now, the Creative Zen has totally put me off. Pretty much any smartphone can do what an MP3 player can plus a whole lot more.