Widescreen on a small screen: Creative Zen W

:D Purty ain't it?! Much bigger screen than the vision M, that's for sure (4.3 inch widescreen vs 2.5 inch) .

Costs the same as the CZVM 60Gb ($479), with half the capacity...but I think the 2x bigger screen, included A/V cable and ac adapter ($29 and $59 sold separately) justifies the price. No usb host, which bummed me out a bit, but it does have a CF slot, and a multi-card adapter available as an option, so it might still be ok for storing my pics on holidays.

Have to say that what convinced me to stick with Creative players is the included software - very user friendly, and converts video formats that aren't compatible, like all those vidcasts that are in m4v (ie. iPod format) that are available on the net, and the ones that come out of my digital camera (.mov format).

Its too big to be pocketable, which is fine since its got a huge screen and a spinning HD that wouldn't survive two days in my pocket anyway, so a bag would be a must to carry this around. Speaking of bags, the drawstring pouch that was provided as a case was pretty lame and provides crap all protection against anything but dust, but I love how the W's chassis is made of a matte, faux brushed metal finish that resists fingerprints and scratches...something that the CZVM sorely needs.

This ones a keeper.

The creative zen vision m has left the building

alas, the honeymoon is over. I returned the Creative Zen Vision M (CZVM) today - thank God for generous return policies!
The tragedy is, the CZVH would have been my perfect multimedia companion, but I just found too many negatives that I know will eventually frustrate me to no end.

First and foremost, the screen is too glossy! It was so bad that my eyes were constantly refocussing to my reflection, giving me a headache after only a few minutes of watching. And what was even more annoying was that the rest of the body was so bloody reflective as well! Sure, it makes it look pretty, but I need something that is functional, and this wasn't working for me.

Finally, though the build quality is pretty good, I felt like I can't comfortably walk around the place with this thing in my pocket - the front is just too scratch prone. Getting it out of the packaging already produced some micro-scratches, and don't get me started about the dodgy drawstring bag that was provided as a case! Also, being my first experience with a hardrive based pocketable device, feeling the hard drive spinning in use alerted me to the fact that carrying this thing around would require special care. I've been spoilt by flash based memory in all my other portable gadgets (PDA's, phones, mp3 players, even cameras), and frankly I'd be too obsessively paranoid about crashing the HD carrying this around in my pocket.

So its with a heavy heart that I drove to the store and returned the CZVM, knowing that apart from those few complaints, that it is a very innovate and worthwhile device. I'll still write up my impressions on it, though obviously I won't be able to tell u anything about the battery life (apart from how long it takes to trickle charge via usb), but hopefully it'll help others decide whether the CZVM is right for them.

May I present: The creative zen vision M 60Gb!

Just got my hot little hands on a new Creative Zen Vision M (CZVM) :D Its a kick-ass mp3/wma/divx/xvid/mpeg/wmv player, and usb host feature built-in!

What is this usb host thing, you ask? Well, it means that you can connect a usb drive or camera to the CZVM (just as you would with a computer) and download the files from the drive/camera to it! No more running out of memory for all your piccies and vids (which happens all too often to me on holidays), and it has a nice 2.5' inch screen to view those downloaded images as well (which is a bit bigger than any of the screens on my cameras). On a cost per Gb comparison, $479 for 60Gb (just under $8 per Gb) vs $75 for a 2 Gb SD card ($37.50 per Gb), the CZVM is a darn good deal in my book. Having said that, there are a few things I don't like about the player, but I'll leave that for my full review, coming soon!

Stay tuned!

Pat
ps:That's a pic of my CZVM 60Gb charging up - that white thing attached to it is the multi-connector dongle (hehe, 'dongle'...)

New pics on flick!

Just a quick post to say that there are new pics on my flickr album - that's going to be the place for my photos to go while MSN spaces continues to not let me upload my photos on my other blog. So just click on the link to the right of this page for the pics...and don't be afraid to leave a comment :)

Take it easy,
Pat

I love redundancy...

..at least with my gadgets. I've just bought a firewire pc card today - its a long story as to how this ties into redundancy, but its got to do with the fact that my laptop is still in the shop (hopefully getting fixed), and until today, I had no way to upload the videos on my minidv to a computer. This is an unusual situation for me since I'm too much of an impatient, paranoid freak about everything that I am hardly without access to a backup of any of my devices...and because I'm not made of money, this usually means that I purposely buy things that can perform double duty in a pinch.

maybe next post, I'll share all my toys with you and what I used them for :)

Watch pat hanging out on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lK7bbNc4Iw

This is what I've been doing every tuesday night (and I plan to continue
doing) for the last six months...and I think one of the funny things is the
fact that I'm actually scared of heights (though I subscribe to the 'don't
look down' philosophy, and its been working well for me so far)

Pat
ps: I cheated with this post and did it with a desktop (considering that I
had to upload the video on youtube first); anyhoo, hope you enjoy it.

just getting a feel for posting on my pda

if you can read this, then all is well.

hehe, ok, so I CAN post photos...wooo!

ok, the photo below is of my friend James from work (and his oversized mug)...I'm on my sister's laptop at the moment, since my own Compaq Presario 2200 piece of Sh_t suddenly decided that it doesn't want to recognise my wireless card - the same one that is built in there, and that has been working fairly well for over a year and a half (I'll do more complaining in another post). And all of that was to explain my photo choice, since I don't have access to many of my photos at the moment. Hmmm, I'm being unusually productive for a saturday morning...better watch some tv and scratch my ass for a bit to compensate :)

moving house

first post! haven't really thought about moving all my ponderings to a 'proper' blog until now - msn spaces was getting a bit too inundated with teenagers (vile creatures) - and I really wanted to have a URL to put in the "URL" window for the forums/blog sites that I post at. Anyhoo, the plan is to move all of my msn spaces stuff here, though I'm not sure that blogger supports photos, or that I'd be able to port all my previous posts from msn spaces. Alright, that's enough writing for now. Stay tuned if you want :)