Tuesday, May 29, 2007
The Creative Zen Stone Is A Great Replacement For Your Shuffle. And It's Audible Friendly!
As many of you who have read this blog for a while already know I can't stand Apple's iTUNES. I don't like being locked into any software let alone software that is so unfriendly to the Blind like most of Apple's offerings in this space. To that end I chose an ARCHOS 604 for it's ability to copy music and video over directly to the player via it's Hard Drive mode. No software, no fuss and I can use Windows Explorer to view the data on the system. The problem of me recommending this to everyone is that it's more of a player for those who are visually impaired rather than for those who are totally Blind. Still if you are a Screen Mag user the ARCHOS rules because you can modify the colors on the menus. And if the 4.3 inch screen of the 604 isn't big enough you could opt for the 704's 7 inch+ unit. But this post oddly enough is not about me going on about my ARCHOS again.
I've been on the look out for a secondary player. I want something small. I want something simple. And I want something just as easy to use as my current player. For a long time I looked at the iRiver players and Rockbox. However I heard about this new player from Creative back at this year's Winter CES. A player the same size as the Shuffle for half the price. Could this be the one I was looking for all this time? I hope it is because carying around a heavy player in shorts means you have to wear a belt just to keep them up. And I am too young to start wearing the black socks with sandals and shorts.
A little research on the net shows that it might just be the perfect solution for an exercise room player. Or for that one you need instead of the big and bulky 30-80 gig monsters. Either way 40 bucks for an Audible friendly player that's super small can't be all bad. I plan on picking one up in the next month or so.
Here's two links if you are interested in knowing more about the Creative Zen Stone 1GB MP3 Players.
CNET Review
http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/musicplay/0,39050466,40511880p,00.htm
Amazon page for the Creative Zen Stone
http://amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-0025491-1641763?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=Creative+Stone
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2 comments:
I have one of these little players and have found it extremely easy to use. The light-weight and the fact that you don't need voodoo software from Apple is a plus. You still have to transfer Audible books using Audible's manager to it, but that is ok. It's almsot too small. The other day it fell off my bed and I almost stepped on it. That is not anything against it, just an observation. If you don't fill it up with audio books or music, you can use it as a flash drive to carry around files and even your screen reader like Window-Eyes.
I own 2 of these Zen Stones and I love them. Very simple to use. Buy the Zen Power Adapter.
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