Journal Miraba's Journal: My experience with Creative's Zen Micro 1
A year and a half ago, I went off to Europe for 7 weeks. Given the choice of lugging around a case full of cds, a cd player, and a pack of batteries or buying a mp3 player, I chose to drop a few hundred dollars on the latter. I went with the Zen Micro, since it was a) not too expensive, b) had excellent battery life, c) was harddrive-based, and d) wasn't an iPod.
(For the record, I have nothing against Apple itself, just their marketing department. But I didn't want a player that didn't give me access to the battery.)
On my trip, I experienced my first problems. They were:
1) My current version of the firmware caused the batteries to drain when the headphones were plugged in, even if the player itself was off.
2) A USB charger is a pain in the ass when you don't have regular access to a computer.
3) It won't charge unless the computer is running Windows and is running an account. Waiting at the log-in screen doesn't count.
4) The headphone jack is prone to breaking.
On paper, only 1 and 4 look like are actual problems, and 1 could have been avoided if I had looked for updates when I got my player. However, 1-3 is a really nasty combination when you're going on vacation.
When I got back, I was still within the 60 days free warranty period, so I called Creative tech support. They were happy to take it back and send me a new one.
Less than a month later, the headphone jack broke, again. They took it back and I bought the extended warranty plan ($25 for 2 years). As it turns out, this was a very good move to make.
Last spring, after much wear and tear (dropping it on linoleum floors, banging it around while not constrained, etc) the headphone jack broke and the system itself would occasionally fail to boot. A quick call and it was exchanged.
It's been most of a year since the last time it broke, but a few weeks ago I noticed that some tracks that I could have sworn were loaded on simply disappeared. "Huh," I thought. "That's odd. Maybe I deleted them to make room for some new stuff."
Last week, it started crashing while in the middle of some specific tracks. Then it refused to allow me to delete tracks via the computer (it allowed me to delete them via the player itself). Then it started freezing when I would try to make it start playing those tracks, only to suddenly catch up to all the directions I gave it, only to lock up. Then it deleted entire albums.
Today I waited on hold for 45 minutes, talked to tech support for 5 minutes, waited on hold 5 more minutes, and then talked to tech again. "Yeah, there's a problem with the harddrive."
In a nutshell, here are the things I've noticed about owning a Zen Micro:
Pros
Excellent customer support when you talk to a real person.
Good battery life, but make sure you turn off the backlight.
Nice computer interface for uploading and mucking around with files on the player.
The harddrive appears to take a good bit of abuse before it has problems.
The screen is indestructible. I've never had any problems with it.
Drag-and-drop files while in harddrive mode.
Cons
Some firmware versions have problems. Big ones.
The headphone jack is prone to breaking, though that may have been fixed in the newer models (I haven't had a problem with my last one).
Overpriced wall charger.
The shape. No really, it's awful. The curved back feels nice in your hand, but it's slick plastic and will fall off of any non-level surface you place it on.
I like my Micro when it works, but it seems to break far too often, even for a small piece of electronics. If you do decide to get a Creative mp3 player, do yourself a favor and buy the extended warranty.
older iriver player (Score:2)