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Last Updated: Nov 2nd, 2009 - 17:32:57 |
MP3 player holds lots of promise, little bang
The white hot format for distributing no-cost CD-quality music via the Internet makes it almost impossible to prevent copying - so the music industry is developing new standards in an attempt to charge customers for music delivered through the World Wide Web.
And the market for pocket-sized MP3 players is liberating downloaded music from confinement inside a personal computer.
Creative Labs Inc. of Milpitas, Calif., best known for its benchmark Sound Blaster line of PC sound cards, has become the second major manufacturer to offer an MP3 player with its Nomad, shipped in mid-July.
The Nomad comes in two configurations. You get 32 MB of internal memory, enough for about 30 minutes of MP3 music files. You can also get a 32-MB SmartMedia memory card that fits into a slot inside the Nomad - boosting total capacity to 64 MB, or about an hour.
Rio being upgraded Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., which pioneered the MP3 player field last November with its Rio 300, is unveiling a significantly upgraded Rio 500 in late August through its new RioPort Inc. subsidiary. Samsung is promising a player called the Yepp in September, with the Lyra from RCA due shortly after.
Several smaller companies, with far less marketing and distribution clout, are also shipping or are about to ship MP3 players.
The Nomad, much like MP3 in general, is full of theoretical promise and beset by real-world shortcomings. Creative Labs certainly gets style points. The Nomad weighs a mere 3 ounces and its burnished metallic case, with a circular LCD display screen in the center, has a pleasing futuristic-retro look.
You load MP3 tunes into the Nomad with a Windows PC, then plug in earphones - the device comes with an earbud-style pair, but you can use any Walkman-type headset. You're now mobile; the Nomad is so thin and light it's almost unnoticeable in a shirt, dress or pants pocket.
Playback is flawless. MP3 files typically match the quality of music CDs. And, because there are no moving parts as in a portable tape or CD player, jogging and other strenuous activity will never cause the Nomad to jump or skip.
More than a player Creative Labs gets further points for making the Nomad more than an MP3 player. The device has a built-in FM tuner, although I found the reception to be less than ideal. There's also a built-in microphone, so the Nomad can store voice memos - an hour of chatter fills about 16 MB. Voice files can be transferred from the Nomad into a PC and converted to familiar formats such as WAV for sharing via e-mail or for transcription via speech-recognition software.
Setting up the Nomad isn't particularly difficult, but Creative's skimpy instruction manual could do more to explain the steps. The device comes with a combination cradle/charger that plugs into both the parallel port of a Windows PC and an AC outlet, so the Nomad's two rechargeable AA batteries get topped off whenever the device is sitting in the cradle. The batteries fully charge in 45 minutes, and will run the Nomad for about five hours.
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