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(More customer reviews)The Creative Zen Micro is no iPod killer. It is the iPod for the rest of us. Where Apple's product is stylish and fun to use, it has that unfortunate Apple characteristic of locking users into buying their music strictly from Apple. iTunes is a fine online music store, but there are many others and some (MSN and Musicmatch for example) are as deep in selection and easy to use. And the Creative Zen Micro gives us a player every bit as intuitive and stylish as the Apple product and the benefit of FM radio, Outlook synchronization and the use of every online music store other than iTunes.
Everyone knows that the Micro comes in an array of colors. Mine is silver. I like the blue glow and the shiny white case that compliment the silver face. Personally I think the black model looks best, but I didn't buy the unit for the color. I've seen a number of reviews of the Micro from people having trouble with the vertical touch pad. After two adjustments, I had no issues with that controller at all. It is more intuitive than running your finger in a circle. The touch pad and menus it opens are user adjustable. I was having trouble getting the Micro cursor to stop where I wanted when scrolling though the menu lists. I adjusted the touchpad sensitivity setting to low but that didn't help. I adjusted it to high and the problem was solved. It may seem counterintuitive to select high sensitivity to better control the touchpad. If you're having touchpad issues, try the high setting and see for yourself.
The Micro comes in with good quality ear buds, a hard shell case that accepts adapters to help it serve as a belt clip or a desk stand. There is also a carrying pouch, a USB 2.0 cord, universal AC adapter, and the removable, rechargeable battery. Other accessories are available from Creative. I am not a big fan of ear buds, but these are pretty good and the cord doubles as the FM radio antenna. I selected Auto Search and the Micro found strong signals for all of its 32 presets. I live in an area with lots of FM radio, so performance in other areas may vary.
Volume on the Micro is controlled by the touchpad, not a separate button. Some folks prefer a separate wheel for volume. It is more important to me that the volume reaches acceptable levels and is EQ adjustable. Both are true on the Micro. There are a number of EQ presets and a limited ability to customize adjustments.
You can create playlists on the fly which is a great feature of the Micro missing in many other MP3 players. It is also possible to create playlists on your computer using either the included Creative software or Windows Mediaplayer 10. I like the interface in WMP 10 better than the Creative software and the Micro syncs with WMP 10 flawlessly.
The Micro has a microphone for recording voice notes. Speak normally into this mic or you will get distorted sound. At normal speaking volumes, the quality was fine. You might be tempted to shout to such a tiny device, but don't.
Creative says the battery will play for 12 hours. Early buyers of the Micro are receiving an extra battery in the package, which is a great bonus. I charged the extra battery and keep it in the pouch to be handy when needed. I've not run a battery test where I drain the unit dry, but I probably won't get 12 hours anyway, because I set the backlight for bit longer than the default. I was pleased to learn that the Micro charges either from the AC adapter or via the USB cable when it is plugged in for syncing. That is a nice touch.
My unit is full with just over 1000 songs, far short of the 2500 claimed for the 5GB drive. This is my fault. The 2500 claim is based on using only WMA format songs recorded at 64kbps. I have a mix of WMA and MP3 files and I usually encode at a much higher rate. This is another reason the Zen Micro is the player for me. The original iPod and other devices are just too big. I don't have anywhere near 10,000 songs to carry around. I am pleased for those folks who do, but drives that big would be a waste of space for me. The 5GB units provide just enough room for me to carry around my digital collection. As the number of songs I own grows, I can always compress them to fit better on the Micro or become more selective about which tunes get synched.
Creative has a winner in the Zen Micro. I really believe this is the music player for the rest of us and, with some marketing behind it, it can do for the other online music stores what the iPod did for its brother iTunes. Thank goodness for choice.
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The Zen Micro digital music player from Creative Labs packs an incredible 5 GB of storage capacity into a shell small enough to sit comfortably in your jeans pocket. It also rides nicely in your hand, with a palm-fitting profile and thumb-friendly front-panel controls. It's a bit shorter than an Apple iPod Mini, yet its rechargeable lithium-ion battery provides 12 hours of continuous playback--50 percent more than iPod Mini's. The Zen Micro is compatible not merely with MP3s and WAV files, but with WMA as well. Toss in USB 2.0 connectivity and you're looking at one spiffy portable music player.But playing isn't all the Zen Micro does. You can use it to receive FM radio (with 32 station presets to keep your favorites at the ready), and to record, either from the radio or from live sources such as voice dictation or lectures using the Zen Micro's built-in condenser microphone.Trimmed in a luminescent blue glow and with easily visible backlit buttons, this stylish silver player holds up to 1,250 songs (83 hours) at 128 kbps or 2,500 songs (166 hours) at lower-fidelity 64 kbps (MP3/WMA)--that's a solid week's worth of music listening, never playing the same song twice. Compatibility with Microsoft's WMA compressed-audio format grants access to over 2 million downloadable songs offered promotionally or for sale online.Perhaps the Zen Micro's coolest attribute is its DJ feature, which will shuffle not only all the songs you've loaded or all the songs in a given album, but, at your discretion, only the tracks you listen to most, or only those you rarely hear, taking the work out of selecting your favorites or hunting out all the music you're still getting to know.For navigation, the device features a vertical, linear touchpad designed to make searching through songs or playlists easy, quick, and fun. The unit's blue, 160 x 104-pixel, electroluminescent LCD shows key functions and song details at a glance, and you can even customize the main menu to keep right at your fingertips the features that matter most to you.Another of the Zen Micro's handy features is its personal organizer. You'll never forget an important anniversary with the onboard calendar, and it also includes a to-do list and a contacts list, all of which sync seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook (Outlook thus required for use of these features). In addition, the device offers a sleep timer and alarm so you can drift off to sleep to the strains of one playlist and wake to a completely different one.The Zen Micro's removable battery is easy to swap with another fully charged battery (additional batteries sold separately), extending your listening by a half-day per swap.What's in the Box The Zen Micro player, stereo earbud headphones, a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, a USB 2.0 cable, an installation CD, a quick- start guide, and Creative MediaSource software.
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