Off topic, but I figured this area was the best fit, hope someone can help.

I was thinking about purchasing one of these from Walmart.com for around $200 with a rebate right now. I figured with 40 GB I would never be able to put my entire CD collection on this player. Need something for when I'm at work, mowing, etc... Besides this unit doubles as a data storage device for a computer files...

Anyway, is there anybody that owns one of these that can provide pros/cons. I don't really want to jump on the IPod bandwagon at a higher price...

Thanks in advance, Randy

A friend of mine has that player and he seems to like it fine. (but he likes my IPOD bettter)
40 GBs is a ton of music, even at higher compression rates. So far I've only loaded about 10GBs and that is slightly over 2000 songs. And thats all songs at or above192kbps. How big is your CD collection?

that is a good question, I'm sure I don't have as many as most people, probably 250-300 cd's is all. I'm sure I would not even touch the storage space. I do like the idea of the ability to place data from my computer also. I was thinking about getting one of those USB Jump Drives, which I've seen upto 1gb now...I have heard the stock ear plugs aren't that great...If I got one I'd use the highest kbps available for the best possible sound..

I own it's bigger brother, the 60GB Zen Xtra and love it. For me it was about the cheaper price, easier to read screen (although the iPod's backlight is better), etc.

To each their own! Good luck!

- D

thanks Daphoid,

I also saw the 60gb version on Walmart.com, but it appears it does not have a rebate right now. I think their price, is in the higher $200's for that model, and the 40gb is right at $200. I'll have to think about it some more, and who knows maybe I'll foot the extra cash for the big brother.

OK, I'll admit to being as naive about portable players such as these as much as I am about game systems!

For those of you who might have seen some of my posts recently concerning whether I want to rip all of my ~700 CDs into a hard drive and set up a networked media player in my living room OR re-load all the CDs into the jukeboxes and go through the long process of entering all the CD info into the jukeboxes............

Would one of these type of devices be my salvation? Can I, (for example):

**** rip all of my CDs onto a computer HD at a high enough data rate to make them virtually or completely indistinguishable from the oiginal CD, then:

****Transfer them to an iPod or Nomad-type device with easily "sortable" or "findable" ergonomics, then:

**** Place the player in a "dock" maybe... in my HT system or in my car?

Is this basically the type of functionality that these devices offer?

Yup. I have all of my CDs on the computer (probably not high enough bitrate to make them sound indistinguishable, but close enough for my ears), have a dock hooked up to the stereo, and have an auxiliary input on the car stereo. I have a 20 GB iPod (well, my wife does), which holds about half of our music at any given time. I have a setup where it randomly selects tunes for moving to the 'Pod, so I get a very wide selection. I know that you, Mark, don't like listening to differing music types at the same time; it's very easy to set up different playlists which can be listened to by themselves on random on the iPod and in iTunes.

BTW, I have a vested interest in promoting iPods. I work on Macs, and since the iPods are considered an entry product for Apple... the more people that have them, the better for me!

i just want to ask a question about the 40gb nomad, i ride a moutain bike to work everyday, and i want to be able to listen to music, does anyone know if the nomad suffers from any issues with a few bumps on a daily basis ?

well I went for a boat ride with mine on (I wasn't driving) and we were slamming through some pretty good waves...so I'd say it could handle your bike ride.

- D

The MP3 quality rendered by different "rippers" varies drastically. I consider myself pretty picky when it comes to my portable MP3 collection. I have used many of the rippers for Windows and found a program that works perfectly for me. It's actually two programs. The first one is "Exact Audio Copy". This program reads the disc information and copies an exact image of the tracks to your hard drive. The second program is called LAME. LAME takes the .WAV file from the hard drive and encodes to .MP3. You can set up EAC to launch LAME so the whole process only takes a few mouse clicks. I use variable bitrate presets called "standard" and "extreme" that work on most modern CD players including my iPod. I think that "Extreme" sounds just as good as the original. There are two web pages that explain this in greater detail if you are interested. Sorry Ken, these are Windows only for now. Here are some links.
http://mp3.radified.com/
http://www.chrismyden.com/nuke/modules.php?op=modload&name=MP3DB&file=painless
Oh yea, I forgot to include the best part. These programs are FREE!