How many of you Punatics are owners of portable...

[G. Leis]

quote:

---

How do you compare your ZENS to the ZUNE? I heard before that if there wasn't an iPod, Creative would have owned the portable MP3 market! Must be a pretty good little product?

---

Just pullin' your chain Lord of the Longboard

Now, ZEN v. Zune. The ZEN is about the size of a credit card, whereas the MS product is maybe 40% larger. The ZEN's screen is 2.5" as opposed to 3" for the Zune with more vivid colors - however the latter's greater size makes it a better choice for watching videos.

The sound quality of the ZEN is IMHO very slightly better; although the stock earbuds on both products suck canal water (much like those of the ipod )

Creative players are ASFAIK now exclusively flash memory based with expansion capabilities via an SD card slot. Since they have fewer moving parts and are very light they are probably a wiser choice for use where they're subject to a lot of jarring movement: jogging, gym workouts, etc. 1st generation Zunes all have a 30GB Toshiba hard drive which makes them heavier and more sensitive to motion. OTOH, this amount of capacity allows a person to load it up with 5 or 6 fearure length movies . . . nice for those long plane rides.

Both have FM radios. Both include media library computer software; but in this area Creative is lightyears ahead. ZEN Media Explorer is straight-forward, integrates with the Windows shell and allows songs, images, and videos to be added to the player by drag-and-drop. In order to get anything on or off the Zune you have to use the Zune software. It works decently once you get used to it but it is a PITA by comparison. Also there is no Mac support for the Zune S/W, which strikes me as counterproductive for a company trying to steal market share from Apple.

BTW, before buying the ZENs I was leaning toward the 3rd generation iPod Nano (see, I'm not complete Bill Gates lotion boy ) until I made a more in-depth comparison and then the choice was easy. A few of the things the ZEN has that Nanos lack:

DivX/XviD support
WMV Support
SD Card slot with SDHC support.
Incredible 97dB SNR Audio Quality. (5G Ipod = 83dB, 2G Nano = 82.6dB)
16.7 million colour screen
Built-In microphone for voice recording
25hr music/5hr video battery life
FM Radio

MSRP:
4GB ZEN = $149
8GB ZEN = $199
16GB ZEN = $299

4GB iPod Nano = $199
8GB iPod Nano = $249
16GB iPod Nano = ???

I really had no plans to pick up another media player, but the deals on the original Zune popping up over the last few weeks made it too good to pass up. There's no way I'd shell out $250 for one of these things (or for any other brand for that matter), but at sub $100 there's always eBay profit waiting if things don't work out! These sorts of sales won't last long, so if you're thinking of buying you'd better act fast.

Incidently here are a few of the websites I troll to avoid paying retail for anything LOL:

http://slickdeals.net/
http://www.dealking.com/deals/
http://www.fatwallet.com/c/18/

aloha,
Gene

_______________________

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati


Edited by - G. Leis on 11/20/2007 14:07:31