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As far as the complaints of this thing locking up and not turning on, the only time I've had that happen is when I am charging it with my laptop and my laptop goes into hibernate. Long battery life, affordable, compact size, and easy to use. I absolutely love this mp3 player. Then you just hold in the reset button while you turn it on and it works fine. Why anyone would buy an ipod I have no idea. You can use any software (i recommend media monkey) to put your music on this thing or just drag and drop like you would a usb drive. Not a big deal at all. Doesn't play games or anything, but if I wanna play crappy games I have a cell phone for that.
I love creative products. Bought this for my boyfriend for every day use and for work. He loves it. Easy to use.
Good luck with that. There are a plethora of issues with this player, and if it weren't for the amazing sound quality, I would have returned it soon after I bought it. Depending on you personal audio tastes and the quality of your headphones, this can be good or bad.*Want to download album art to your X-Fi. Nice deep bass, crisp tones and crystal-clear sound.
*No FLAC support; seriously, in this day and age. Oh yeah, you can also share files with other X-Fi owners that are nearby, but seeing as how only ten people own an X-Fi, that's pretty much useless too.Despite all these problems (and there are a ton of minor issues, no room here to list them all), I can easily say the X-Fi is the best sounding player I've ever used. How lame is that.*You can modify acoustics with the built-in X-Fi software, but you can't adjust the equalizer while the software is enabled. In other words, you can't bookmark, create playlists, or continue playback of a track after you shut the player off. The Zen X-Fi 32GB is what pushed me over the edge.
It will crash the X-Fi, forcing you to do a hard reset and rebuild your music collection.*Creative's tech support is horrible, and not just for their players. Probably the worst in the business. For the love of God, use MediaMonkey or WMP when you need to transfer files to the X-Fi.*Speaking of transferring files, you can't do it with drag-and-drop like you could with Creative's older players. It's either X-Fi or EQ, but not both. Even using Creative's Centrale software, your chances of getting the album art to display at all is pretty slim.
It is honestly the buggiest software I've ever had the dishonor of trying to use. I've been using Creative products for almost twelve years now, and I've finally decided to start looking for audio products from other companies. Creative only released one firmware update for the X-Fi, which fixed absolutely nothing. Despite a huge uproar from customers (check out their forums), they have no plans to release any more fixes.
Fortunately WMA files sound particularly good on this player.*The wireless function is useless, unless you're accessing music on your local network via Creative's music server or listening to podcasts. You can't IM or browse the internet. It seriously makes the iPod sound like audio sludge in comparison.
Let us count the ways Creative has finally hit rock bottom in the MP3 player department:*You can use an SD card with the Zen X-Fi, but it does not integrate with the player's menu. Buy a pair of Ultrasone Zino headphones if you want a truly surround sound experience with the X-Fi.In summation, buy the X-Fi only if you're looking for an outstanding audio experience. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.*Avoid using the supplied Centrale music software at all costs.
It crashes constantly, it can take up to 1/2 hour to load ()., and none of the features work as intended. The earbuds supplied with the player are excellent, but I've used several other headphone brands to the same effect. Other than that, avoid it completely and look at other brands.
My complaint is that after a year of light use (around 1 hour a day) the thing just died off, it won't turn on at all. In my prior purchases I always got quality and was overly satisfied, so when I got the Creative Zen X-Fi 32GB in late 2008's my expectations were no different. I've always been a fan of Creative's products. I am not very knowledgeable about electronics but my guess is that it's got something to do with the battery. The player itself is really cool, it's sleek and delivers good (not great) audio quality. The software is awful, but with so many free music transfer programs nowadays it can be looked over. Anyways, I'm sure its going to affect my budget negatively. I wouldn't have bought it if I knew the battery was so badly made.
Additionally, the player does not join the content stored on the card with the content stored in the Zens built in memory and so it does not show up in "Albums", "Genres", etc. Initially, the player would crash if I selected a bookmark and then hit rewind so that I could be reminded of what was happening in the story at the point where I saved the bookmark. The player can hold up to 10 bookmarks at a time. A major PITA.
Perfect. It does not continue playing the other chapters of the book in succession. However there is another problem. If you stop listening to your audio-book for a short time, and you don't play anything else, when you turn the Zen back on it will automatically resume where you left off. If you listen while driving it is unsafe to do this. You must return to the Main Menu, browse to the book, and then browse to the desired chapter and begin play there.
The Zen correctly resumes playing where you left off, but it stops playing at the end of the current chapter of the book. You set a manual "Bookmark" before you stop listening to a book so that you can return to where you left off. Also, unsafe to do while driving.3. Setting a "Bookmark". It will continue from where you stopped listening and it will continue to play all the remaining chapters of the book in succession.
Many MP3 audio books are broken up into 40-60 chapters. Not very convenient or practical.4. After doing this there were no more crashes.2. Only if you dig deep enough will you find the deficiencies regarding using this player for Audio-Books.1. If you leave the Zen off for longer (an hour or more)., when you turn it back on it resumes at the BEGINNING of your current chapter, not where you left off in that chapter. Now you must hunt through the chapter until you find the spot where you left off, which can be quite time consuming. Using an SD Memory Card in the player.
When playing a book from a memory card you lose all the bookmarking features built into the player and it becomes totally impractical for books. The Zen is compatible with MP3 books, Audible books, and Overdrive Library Books.It is a shame that the players bookmarking features are so poorly implemented. However, when you select that bookmark to return to where you left off there is a problem. One can only wonder at the reasons for this. I was able to fix this by using the Zens "Recovery Mode" and running "Clean Up". The auto-bookmarking feature. It works like this: From the Zen's Main Menu, you browse the cards folder structure and select content to play by file name.
I imagine that the hardware must necesitate the restrictions because only an idiot would choose to implement them in such a crippled manner.Other than the above, I like the player.
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