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After a difficult few months of balancing finances, taking care of a sick parent, and taking more odd jobs left and right just to afford a semblance of a life, I rewarded myself yesterday with an impulse purchase of Creative's Zen MP3 player. Ever since my iPod conked out on me a few months ago, I have been in search of alternatives because I really find it inhuman to spend all that money on an iPod considering the demand should make the technology far cheaper these days. There's this seething feeling inside me that is beginning to hate Apple products for the simple reason that they have become what Microsoft and Windows was a decade ago.

So I spent money on someone else, someone hungrier to churn out better products. And I am very very very happy for focusing attention on Creative's Zen Player. It has everything I need in a digital music player including a built-in microphone to allow you to make voice recordings and offers expandability through an SD card slot. Originally, I wanted to get the 16 gb version but the incompatibility with Mac scared me so I opted to get the baseline 4gb model instead, thinking that I can just use SD cards with the device.

While I can use the player as a glorified SD card reader that allowed me to transfer music files from the Mac to the SD card inside, a little google-ing later presented a beautiful solution that permitted me to connect my Creative Zen player with a Mac. XNJB is a program that allows you transfer and manage files on your Creative Zen player using a Mac computer. It's great and works well. While it may not beat the convenience of a program like iTunes, it is a welcome
reprieve for me. Now I am able to maximize the Zen's built-in storage and still have my SD card slot freed up for other things.

Aside from the price, the Creative Zen player also offers a powerful package that can give Apple a run for its money. It can basically do everything Apple iPods can do: playing music, movies and displaying photos on different formats. It is iTunes compatible (that is iTunes on Windows). I also like the sound quality on this player. I used the same earphones from my old iPod and the sound is better on the Creative Zen, with a fuller bass that doesn't pound the ears as much plus a more precise volume control adjustment.