The Good: well made, solid unit. lcd is legible and concise. controlling the unit takes some getting used to, but the controls are flexible enough to select individual songs or albums to play. you start by making a playlist which you may save or discard after playing. firmware upgradable means you can add upgrades easily after they become available. sound is clear. full volume output for line out, volume controlled output for headphones. goes about 4 hours on 1800 rechargable NiMH AA. the 20gb capacity is a winner. you load the jukebox via a usb cable. this is a slow process since this unit is only at usb 1.1, but you can cue up your uploads, and do dinner. if you dont eat too fast, theyll be done when you return. Navagation is good.

The Bad: loudest volume is not quite enough. for example, when listening with headphones on an airplane, you can just about hear. when using the unit to drive an amplied device such as a stereo, the stereo volume bust be boosted quiite a bit for volume equivalent to that from other sources. boot times, down to 30 sec with new firmware, still too long.

Recommended: it is highly recommended that you purchase additional sets of batteries and a battery charger. A cover (skin) is a nice extra.

There have been a few annoying things about the Jukebox:
1) It doesnt put your songs in alphabetical order
2) Occasionally there are some buggy issues with it where it will shut itself down after I transfer songs to it from the computer. Also, of my 850 songs, it refuses to play one of them even though its in MP3 format
3) it turns on too easily
4)The battery gauge is completely inacurate (even tho the battery kife is pretty potent at about 4 hours per set of batteries)

In conclusion, the few flaws do not mar the great looks and monstrous storage space of the Nomad Jukebox 20 GB... its a great value and it is of good quality.

If you really like music, this unit will reorganize your life. You can carry around all (well, an awful lot, anyway) of your music, organize it into as many different playlists as you want, and play it pretty much anywhere. Of course, there are also some annoying problems, but dont let that stop you from getting an amazing device like this.

The best parts: (1) Sound quality. For all but audiophile equipment, the limitation on sound quality will either be the MP3 file (if its a low-grade one) or the equipment you play it through (mass-market stereos and headphones, etc). If you hook this up to an expensive audiophile system, you will hear its limitations, but it plays compressed sound files anyway, so thats no surprise. (2) It goes everywhere and hooks up to nearly anything. Having line level out as well as a headphone-out jack adds to its versatility. I use it when I work out or go walking, at work with headphones or through the computer, with my living room stereo through an RCA cable, in the car with a casette adapter, and with the boombox Ive got in the kitchen, also with a casette adapter. Having the same set of playlists instantly accessable all of those places is simply amazing. (3) A surprisingly usable interface. I had a flash-based MP3 player a couple of years ago, and based on that, I thought it would be really hard to find and play music amongst hundreds of albums. The interface makes this pretty easy.

Things that have bugged me in the 6 weeks Ive had this: (1) battery life could definitely be better. I wish it could use lithium-ions. (2) Interfacing with the computer. Im not in love with the interface of the PC software, the transfer speed is sluggish, and Ive had some stability problems, though nothing that renders it unusable. (3) It takes 20-30 seconds to boot up when you turn it on, and sometimes the buttons are kind of slow to react. (4) Its kind of chunky, and heavier than Id like. (5) It skips a little sometimes when Im out walking. Im not a jogger, but if you want to jog with a player, this might not be the one. (6) This may just be me, but Ive had some trouble matching it with good headphones. It works great for rock and electronica with the Sony earclips I use for working out, but it sounds really fatiguing when I pair it with my Grado SR-60s at work for listening to jazz and blues. I think Im going to pair it with a headphone amp from Headroom and try some other headphones (Sennheiser HD570s, AKG K501s, etc.), to see if I can find the right combination.

Overall, though, I definitely recommend this player, even though I hope they will do some things to improve it when they come out with their next model. It is an outstanding device, and I would by another in a second if anything ever happened to it.

To add to the mix:

1) Creative is playing the BF (before formatted) game.
The 20 GIG drive actually is only 19.064 GIG or about 95% of stated capacity.
(As an example, my 60 GiG PC drive formats to 58.6 .)

2) While the Nomad is portable, it really works best connected
to a system.
I have mine connected to the "CAMBRIDGE MODEL 88 AM and FM Stereo Table Radio".
It is cheaper than the BOSE and has 2 external inputs.
I have the Nomad connected to one and a RioVolt SP-250 CD/MP3 disc player connected to the other.
The flat, buttonless top of the radio, allows for perfect placement of the two players.

3) I use my PC for burning and storing MP3 files.
For this purpose I chose Nero Software and a Western Digital 60GiG External Firewire Drive.
I then transfer selected files over to the Nomad (FireWire > USB via PC).
This solves the backup problem and allows me to delete whatever I want from the Nomad,
knowing that the originals are safe elsewhere (on the PC Drive).

All in all, its a good beginning and I look forward to Creative
updating the Firmware and hardware attachments (remote control for one).

First of all, the power supply (with converter) is somewhat large. However, the player does come with 2 sets of rechargable AA batteries. The batteries are supposed to last 4 hours, but I havent been so lucky.

Secondly, be prepared to devote a large amount of time to transferring your music to the player. Its no slower than any other MP3 ripping process, but its gonna take some serious time. I think I spent 2-3 hours a day for about a week to get all my CDs transferred. I believe you can utilize an online service to recognize the titles of your songs, but I typed them in manually.

Finally, its a little difficult to find the songs youre looking for once theyre stored. You have to deal with a small screen, with limited input keys (due to the overall small size of the machine).

But these are really my only complaints. And I think Im being picky. Overall this player does everything its advertised to do. Thats why I gave it 4 stars.

o It supports saving data files (theoretically making a nice backup device), but will drop the connection if you try to transfer a file >200MB or so.

o The database gets messed up with "duplicate" information (e.g., the same title appearing twice in the same album).

o The processor is underpowered, leading to problems if you try to, say, scan through the library while a VBR MP3 is playing.

... and any number of minor annoyances.

Im returning mine - Ill try again when their 2nd generation jukebox is out, if I dont try the new Rio jukebox first.

The device interface is intuitive and organizes tracks by artist album and genre. Contrary to what another reviewer stated, you can play an album easily by highlighting the album name and pressing play. The included software works easily to tranfer tracks from your PC to the Nomad. It would have been nice to include a synchronizing feature ala Apples iTunes, but its not critical. And while USB transfers are slower, once you tell the software what tracks to move, theres no reason to watch it happen. Go have a cookie and come back when its done.

Battery life, as previously alluded to, is an issue. The included batteries give you four hours if your lucky, so get some more 1800 mAh aas and keep a bunch charged. Not a fatal weakness to be sure. Its very helpful that the Nomad charges your batteries while plugged in.

Overall, Im impressed with this device. No more do I need to pick 15 tunes to put on an mp3 player before I hit the door. I always have all of them with me, and about 10 gigabytes of space (!) left to add more. The sound is excellent, the technology totally sound. As a bonus, those hundreds of mp3s youve been accumulating are backed up all the time.

Get one. Youll love it.

My main complaints:

a. short (90 day) warranty. I hope it holds up over time (runs warm in the case, this makes me kinda nervous).

b. Buggy software. It crashes my computer every now and then. It refuses to play back MP3 files stored on my hard disk. The Cd ripping introduced some noisy artifacts when I tried to rip a WAV file. Then the CDDB feature refused to work properly. Right now I am ripping Cds using Real Jukebox, and then transferring the results to the Nomad via the Nomad software. This takes more steps, but I get the album and track info with no problems, and problem-free ripping.

c. An undocumented feature: You can use it as a hard drive to store/backup other kinds of files, once you diddle with some software settings. But the file management capabilities are still pretty limited. I wish Nomad would write a program enabling this device to be "seen" by the computer as an extra drive with its own drive letter.

The Playcenter software is wonderful, implimenting CD ripping, MP3 encoding, and the usual transfer. The ripping runs much faster then any other software has. I was able to rip an entire 1 hour cd in just under 7 minutes (using a 40x read drive). The encoding is also supurb, converting WAVs and WMAs into MP3s with great quality and without the clicks and crackels. And its incredibly easy to install. Just pop the CD in, click next a bunch of times, and there, youre done.

The player itself can be a little confusing at first. But once you get the hang of it, its really a sinch. When you first turn it on, it displays the active queue screen, this is where the music you are currently playing is displayed. You hit the LIB button and it brings you to the screen where all your music is displayed according to category. From here you can choose a Play List, an Artist, and Album, or a Genre to play. Just move the cursor to your choice, and hit the play button. The screen switches to the Active Queue, and the first track begins to play. Simple as that.

The sound quality is also amazing. Using EAX and 4-point surround, i got great quality when hooked up to my harmon kardon 5.1 receiver. The sound was rich and full, no scratches or skips, just great surround sound music.

There are very few downsides to the Nomad Jukebox. For one, it does use a hard drive, which uses moving parts, as opposed to using memory cards, which dont have any moving parts. This is a disadvantage, as you need a skip protection (as if 5 minutes wasnt more then enough anyway) and any forceful hits to the player (dropping, etc.) could cause damage to the HD. Secondly, it uses the USB to transfer data. Not that the USB isnt fast, but an IEEE-1394 connection would probably have been better. Last, the price... its slightly pricey, but its well worth the price.

If you are willing to pay, then I would say, definetly get this, its the best money can buy.

Like the first reviewer I wish there were an IEEE-1394 connection for faster music transfer. Another thing that you have to be careful about is not to drop this thing. It doesnt skip when you jog, but Im still not sure whether the hard drive will crash if you shake it too much, so do be careful.

Other than these very minor gripes, get this for this holiday season. Simply the best!

Other reasons to buy it? Never having to buy batteries again. It comes with 2 sets of rechargable batteries, providing up to 8 hours of listening enjoyment. It *never* skips, unlike CD players when walking, or exercising. Your CDs will last longer, since you will have transferred the music to mp3, and then onto your portable walkman, youll no longer be switching out your cds to play another one.

Heres how you record on the Nomad. From that Recording menu, you select your recording preferences, press ARM to prepare to record, and then the Play button to start the recording. Recordings will be saved as non-lossy .WAV files (nice for creating quality CDs of live performances) into 10 minute increments. Incremental recordings, saved as tracks, are a safety precaution against crashing, something that happens frequently when you have multi-gigabyte files. The Nomad will save the recording to an Album called Recording nnn, where n is the next available number starting at 001. The first 10 minutes of the recording will be labeled Track 1. If you go beyond 10 minutes in your recording, each successive track will be named Track 2, Track 3, and on like that. Once I have a recording saved, I use Creatives PlayCenter 2 on the PC (connect it up using USB - wheres Firewire when you need it?) to copy the file over to my hard drive to tweak the sound file to my liking in Cool Edit. Make sure you have plenty of room on your PCs hard drive, because 48khz recordings use up a lotta drive space.

One thing about the PlayCenter software. I had a conflict with some CD burning software which would hang my PC (a 600mhz Pentium III/320MB) everytime I tried to install the PlayCenter. I was on the phone for two hours with Creative Labs tech who was very good, but couldnt solve my problem. Finally, after reinstalling Win2K, I found the problem to not be a software conflict, but a hardware conflict between the PlayCenter2 software and the PCI slot position of my ATI All-in-Wonder 128 video card. Once I swapped the video card to a different PCI slot, the software installed fine. Yeesh.

The PlayCenters interface is nice. You have two windows that represent the source and destination of where music or data is and where you want to put it. So, you can rip a CD, copy recordings made from the Nomad back to your PC, take existing MP3s OR ANY DATA off your hard drive and throw it on the Nomad.
Notice I said ANY DATA. Because earlier versions of the firmware and PlayCenter2 dont have the ability to copy any data to/from the Nomad, make sure you download the latest firmware and PlayCenter2 versions ... . You can use this thing as a backup drive as
well!! You can also control all aspects of the Nomad, from deleting songs, to creating playlists, and labeling and organizing your music from this interface.

One of the best things about the PlayCenter is that it has a link out to CDDB, the music database. When you rip a CD (at any quality level you want, from 20kbps all the way up to 320kbps), all the track information is automatically downloaded and the music is categorized for you. One warning: you have to have a speedy CPU, memory, and CDROM in order to avoid skipping or other artifacts when you rip songs. Id say youd have to have at least a 300mhz Pentium II pc, 128MB RAM and a 24x speed burner. My box is a 200mhz Pentium with 64MB RAM and a 20x reader and I got artifacts when I burnt a Vivaldi CD at 320kbps. Another great thing about the software is that it allows you to rip to both to the Nomad and a directory on your PCs hard drive at the same time for backup purposes. I dont have that much space on my PC, so I choose not to make the backup. Finally, the sound quality varies according to the encoding rate. Music recorded well and encoded well sounds great, but do yourself a favor and getter a better set of headphones than the ones included. I have an older pair of Sony MDR-V600s and they sound much better than the Creative headphones.

In the final analysis, time will tell if this thing is actually going to hold up under many recordings. I pray that Creative has some extra hard drives lying around in case this bad boy crashes!! I have yet to figure out the best means of backing this thing up, but Id imagine itd be a good idea to have a 20GB drive lying around. Enhancements Creative could make are plenty: Creative needs to get a remote control for this thing as it will be hooked up to my main stereo. Also, Creative should include a digital out for people who want to use this as their main sound source for both home and traveling. Digital out would give us music lovers better audio quality. A line level meter would be appreciated for recordings. Finally, make the data transport mechanism Firewire for quick uploads/downloading of data. All-in-all, this is a nifty little device. Id really give this guy a 4.5. Lets hope it holds up under repeated use!