Creative Zen

The Creative Zen Mosaic is a fine alternative to the iPod. It is attractive, very user friendly, and perfectly sized. Although there are not as many accessories available for the Mosaic, the custom portable… speakers produce a good sound, and both are reasonable priced. My 11 year-old daughter loved hers so much that her younger sister asked for one for her birthday. An added benefit to the Mosaic is the reduced likelihood of theft, since it is not a "hot" item. Parents living on a budget will appreciate this product.

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I bought the Zen Mozaic for my 7 year old son and he loves it. I was a little worried that he might catch some flak for not having an ipod just like everybody else. However, all of his little pals who have… ipods were intrigued by the different design and think the Zen is very cool. I use Windows Media Player to easily transfer music to the device. It sounds fantastic. The screen quality is excellent and is relatively large for this small class of device. It is very easy to load pictures onto the Zen by simply dragging and dropping. A great feature that the Zen has that others do not is the external speaker. My son loves it because he can have his brother, sisters and little friends all listen to music with him. Obviously the sound quality through the external speaker leaves much to be desired but it does make it easy for gregarious people to listen to music with their friends.

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I just received this player and I'm afraid to report that I can't even get it to take an initial charge. I've tried it on two computers and neither one recognizes it and the lights on the player don't light… up. Am returning it immediately. Like a fool, I am also ordering another one in hopes that it's just bad luck. Sigh. All I want it to listen to books from NetLibrary. I have an iPod that I've had for two or three years and it still works great (a little buggy but I've learned how to reboot) but I want my books for free. I do hope that the next review I post will be about how great my replacement Zen Mosaic is.

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I went to several PC and Apple review websites for MP3 players before finally deciding on this Zen by Creative because I knew nothing about MP3 player pros and cons between the brands and models available.… All I knew is that I did not have $200 for an ipod nano. My criteria in the order of importance was 1. price, 2. sound 3.functionality and compatibility with any headset and laptop 4. sturdiness 5. size 6. color. For $50 this 2GB player is a great deal. It holds 500 songs and since I never intended for my MP3 player to hold my entire library of songs at one time I find 2GB more than sufficient. It can play any MP3 format so I am not locked into a any specific song- purchasing plan. It's very portable and discreet; fits easily into the pocket of my jeans. I specifically was looking for controls that would be on the player itself (I distinctly did not want an iPod shuffle because the controls are all on the headset and you can then only use that one headset). The sound quality is "normal" and what I expected using the earbud "headphones," and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the sound when put on speaker mode. And, I know it sounds silly, but I decided to get the 2GB player even though I could have gotten the 4GB layer for just $10 more because only the 2GB came in metallic pink. The #1 thing that really frustrated me about this product is the Creative software. The ripping is very basic, you cannot rate the songs, you cannot make things such as CD covers or print outs of the list of songs, etc. But worse, is that if you already have Windows Media player installed on your laptop installing the Creative software will completely crash your laptop! And for this reason I give "Ease of Use" 2 stars (otherwise the player itself is 5 stars). Granted, it was pilot error on my part to have two media player/ CD rippping tools installed at the same time; but nowhere on the creative software that came with the player or Creative website did it give a warning about not installing the software if you already have another tool such as Windows Media player installed. The #2 thing that I don't like is the fact that the usb cord to dock and charge the player is literally 2 1/2 inches long. But since I knew this ahead of time from a review I had read, I don't hold this annoying fact against the player in my rating. However, I did want others who read this to be aware of this shortcoming. I have a 3 year old and it has been dropped numerous times and keeps on playing as well as it did the first day.

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