So after much hassle with Carphone Warehouse whom I have a contract with, I finally got my hands on an Apple iPhone 3G. Its an 8GB  model rather than the 16GB version though. I can live with that! I’ll continue to use my 16GB iPod Touch alongside the phone as I’ll be primarily using the phone for camera/gps/app use mostly. The iPod Touch will eventually be jailbroken giving me access to superb apps that Apple deem unsuitable for their store. Irony mentions below…

I could write a review but I just can’t be bothered echoing the numerous positive reviews that exist out there already. AnandTech and TrustedReviews have the best reviews I have read if you’re after a lengthy read. Apparently PR will also be doing one at the end of the year when the next version of the iPhone arrives.

I’ll just do a quick rundown.

Firstly the device, just like the v1 oozes om nom nomness and build quality is top notch. The rear covering of the device has mixed reviews, some owners like it and some don’t. Personally I prefer the v1′s brushed alu finish as the 3G’s plastic backing can get slippery on a hot day should your hands become sweaty. Plastic was needed though or the GPS signal would be next to useless.

Call quality is top dogs. I can’t stress how much of an improvement it is over the v1 phone.  The speakers are even a lot louder too. The screen remains the same, featuring a high dpi haptic based panel. It is the same panel used on the iPod Touch and both devices are still remarkably identical with a few additions on the iPhone…

• 3G – Fetching data at around 1MB/Sec means that data transfers are very quick – if you’re in a 3G enabled area. Thanks to O2′s unlimited data tariffs you’re always online so all your emails, calendars, contacts etc are always up to date. If you land in a non-3G area then the phone drops to the inferior EDGE networks, which are approximately 100KB/Sec.
• GPS – Nothing new here. The 3G uses A-GPS (Assisted GPS) which not only utilises satellites, but it also locks on to nearby mobile phone masts and Wi-Fi hotspots to triangulate your position. It results in less CPU utilisation and quicker location of the user. It works very well, but cannot be used as a proper GPS. One thing that should be noted is GPS uses some serious CPU power. Google Maps feels rather slow in use when GPS is on, sluggish more like.
• Speakers – Yes great, they sound nice and that is all. I am not sure if you can use them for music playback as I won’t be using this device for music playback.
• 2MP Camera – Well it is a hundred times better then the 2MP camera on my old Sony Ericsson w880i. Firing up the Exposure application fills the screen with a live camera preview. Sadly the camera is extremely under-par for a device of this quality. Infact it is the weakest feature of the device. All photos taken with the camera are location geotagged, although this feature is rather flaky at present.

So that is essentially the list of features that separate the iPhone 3G from the iPod Touch. Hardware wise (minus the above list) both devices are identical and will easily be able to run the high end applications and games that will no doubt hit the Apple App Store over the next few months.

The phone isn’t without issues though. Firmware 2.0 is generally awful with high battery usage, application crashes, sluggish contact list scrolling and typing lag. So much for the apparently ‘buggy, battery draining apps’ on installer.app eh PR?! Jailbreak third party apps had none of this! Apple’s pointers on conserving battery power are so ludicrous that they might as well just state “Get a Nokia N95!”.

Another odd issue is widespread reports of poor signal/reception. I have yet to see more than 2 signal bars on my 3G, and I live in London for crying out loud!

So, it has arrived. About a year too late if you ask me. Creative had some awesome MP3 players a couple of years ago with the Zen Vision:M leading the pack, and then things went all pear shaped around the time when the Apple Touch arrived. For some daft reason Creative chose to begin producing peripherals for the Apple iPod range thus ignoring their own Zen range. This caused much confusion amongst Zen fans and many pondered where the company was going as they began to shut down one of their larger production facilities.

Specifications

• 16GB or 32GB capacity
• Built-in Creative X-Fi technology
• Dimensions: 55 x 83 x 12.5 mm
• Weight: 70 g
• SD / SDHC card slot
• 2.5 inch screen displaying 16.7 million colours
• Built-in speaker
• FM Radio with 32 station presets
• Battery life:
  • 25 hours audio (15 hours with speaker) based on 128kbps in WMA
  • 5 hours video
• Supported audio formats:
  • MP3, WMA (DRM 10), AAC (M4A), WAVE, Audible
• Supported video formats:
  • WMV9, MPEG4, DivX, XviD (320 x 240)
• Supported photo format:
  • JPEG (Baseline: Up to 16.6 Mega Pixels)
• Voice Recorder format:
  • IMA ADPCM (16 kHz, Mono)
• Wireless LAN: (16GB & 32GB Model ONLY)
  • Wireless streaming
  • Downloading of content
  • Emotive Text Chat with Friends

Incoming Babble/Rant/Whine

I rarely make mistakes when purchasing gadgets and gizmos. I do my research as much as possible, then scour forums for opinions and feedback from owners. I then do some research into the company and learn about their past products and how much attention those products had (e.g firmware/software updates). Finally I make my purchase based on information from the above analysis.
 
However I think I’m getting old, because I have made a balls up, a rather large one at that. I am mad about music, in fact the ladies at work often comment that I had been born with earphones already in my ears. So it is with some irony that I work in the field of audio too. I love portable audio players (except crummy ipods to you teenyboppers). I have heaps of them, however at present I own an iPod Touch…not the best sounding player like every other iPod in existance but the touch is a unique exception compared to a normal iPod – it has potential. More on that later anyway.

Every morning I head off to work, shoving my lovely Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 5 Pro’s (mouthful!) into my earlobes, only to grimace at the poor muffled sounds I hear from the Touch. Compared to my other players the ‘audio’ is dreadful. If anyone tells me otherwise, they clearly need a slap and to listen to the competition whole have been miles ahead of Apple for years now.

 
Anyway, it was two weeks ago to this day that I had a brainstorm. Why not dump the Touch and get the best audio player there is, because all I do is listen to music and podcasts anyway! I then backed this up by the fact that I purchased from iTunes two AAC encoded tracks at 44KHz from the rock band Aerosmith. Now I purchased these tracks so they could replace the MP3 versions I already had on the player. For some reason I thought the AAC versions would sound brighter and better. Imagine my horror when it sounded godawful playing through the touch. So I played them through my top end soundcard via iTunes and it sounded acceptable, but no better than the old MP3 equivalent. Angry I became.
 
Off I went and did research into a player that I had heard people raving on about since mid 2007 – the Cowon iAudio D2. This little bugger had the most powerful music output of all portable players, and was also rated as one of the best sounding too. Essentially it has received rave reviews almost everywhere. The 16GB version is currently due to hit the UK so I purchased the 8GB version. Since it has expandable storage via SDHC cards I could be happy that my player is future proof storage wise anyway.
 
So the D2 arrived and I fired off some snapshots before eagerly digging into the device. Crikey its tiny I thought to myself. Almost smaller than a credit card! It was also incredibly light. With a quoted 50hr battery life, I wouldn’t be charging this bugger in a hurry. After playing back some of my MP3′s I was blown away – and that was with the default JetEffect settings untweaked.

 
After much tweakage I came away with a sound that rivalled my superb, if dated iRiver players, which I rate as having the best audio quality out of the portable players I have tried. The sound was equal to my Creative Zen Vision:M in places and better in other places. On the whole the audio tweaks available on the D2 were more extensive than anything I currently own or have owned. All good so far? Well no. After 4 days of use my desire to dump the touch had changed…

Whilst on the way to a friends house in Watford, I had somehow taken a wrong turn in the bad weather and become a bit lost. It turned out I had overshot their house by about two streets. I had both players on me at this stage, so out came the touch. I scanned around for any un-secured wireless connections and found four. Being connected to the internet I could now use the google maps application on the touch and triangulate my very position, and then found my friends house because you can search google maps using your Contacts info, also stored on the touch. It then dawned on me that if I had left the touch at home…
 
Back to the D2 anyway. I love the little thing, it has a ton of features for the hardcore audio enthusiast, it has a very nice touch screen, it has a radio, hell it works off a USB connection so you can use it as a storage device on ANY computer with a USB connection. Suffice to say there are enough pro’s. So here goes…
 
Despite all my research, I had overlooked the interface. More to the point I overlooked the twiddly, finicky music navigation browser because the rest is fine. There is so much information on the screen at any one time that everything looks compressed and squashed in on the display. The 2.5" screen is just too small in this day and age, and the interface in places fails to work the way you need it to. Scrolling through my list of albums was a painful experience. Granted the touch does it a lot better but that thing is in a different league to the D2 anyway so direct feature-set comparisons aren’t fair.
 
I just couldn’t get to grips with tapping/holding the down arrow constantly just so I could find my album. Once I found the album everything was fine, but navigation is obviously the most important part of the user experience on a player and it left me quite annoyed. Especially since I had paid an inflated price for the player since it is so hard to obtain – £174. You can also scroll music lists using the ‘flick’ approach that the touch uses, but it works poorly. This is mainly due to the type of touchscreen that both players use. The D2 uses a tactile based one, whilst the Touch’s screen relies on the static electricity on your fingertips, enough of the geekyness anyway. I wrote a letter to the chaps who I had purchased the player from asking for a refund, or at least a partial refund. I know when I’m wrong!
 
So its back to the inferior sounding ‘plod’. I had to do something to clear up the audio on this thing. So I jailbroke the bugger. For those who aren’t in the know Jailbreaking an iPhone or iPod Touch removes any restrictions that Apple have placed on the device and allows you to install and run third party applications – and there are literally hundreds of those as I found out. The Touch was hacked in about 3 minutes flat and I was up and running installing useful and pointless applications. I found a core set of useful ones and stuck to those. Virtually overnight my touch had been transformed into a REALLY useful device in many ways I can’t really describe.

 
Upon browsing the forums I noticed a lot of users changing certain interface elements e.g. Better Battery charge meters. So I dabbled into that and changed a fair amount of stuff. Sadly I was hoping to find an application that resembled a user configurable Equalizer to try and tweak the poor sound but had no luck so that remains one of my wishes.
 
With Firmware 2.0 on the way for the iPhone and Touch, I now face a decision. Do I eventually upgrade to it and lose all my custom apps, or do I go with Apple’s decision to allow users to download apps both free and paid for from iTunes?

Silence from Creative after customer revolt

Picture the following scenario. Imagine if you had gone out and purchased a Creative Labs Soundblaster of some kind, there’s loads of them around but the most popular ones would be their Audigy and XFI series cards. Now imagine smiling when you saw that ‘Vista Compatible’ logo on the box, meaning that the card would work on Microsoft Vista. So you purchase it, take it home and install it into your PC. You would then either:

• Install the drivers from the included CD
• OR simply get and install the latest drivers from the Creative website

You would now have a fully working card right? You should be able to use all its capabilities given that it is ‘Vista Compatible’. What would you do if you found out that it wasn’t really ‘Vista Compatible’ ? This is what thousands of creative soundcard owners have been asking themselves for years now. Creative’s soundcard drivers have always been laughably poor, even back when I used them on my Audigy 2 in Windows XP, but it turns out that their new XFI drivers are just as bad. There are no decent working drivers in Vista at present I am led to believe. Because the Creative ‘Soundblaster’ moniker is such a powerful one – your average joe public just assumes that the product adds high quality sound to your PC, and will then go out and purchase one without knowing all this.

A driver modder known as Daniel_K decided to come up with his own modified drivers that restored functionality to these cards – everyone was happy, well except for Creative. One would think that they’d embrace his skills and maybe hire him, but instead they decided to do him for copyright issues! Daniel_K was warned on the Creative forums to cease activity, and what then followed was a backlash that I have never seen before. The forums were filled with thousands of unhappy gamers/soundblaster owners ranting and mocking Creative for ignorance. For a corporate company as big as Creative, they should be able to afford driver engineers to develop the best drivers possible but no. Instead they just rehash and rebox card after card to make even more money – and it works.

Since Windows Vista arrived on the scene, driver vendors have struggled to come up with decent functionality with their drivers as they have to work with new API’s they aren’t used to. As I have stated in the past, Creative were one of those companies that ended up admitting that their Audigy 2 and XFI drivers were poor in the first place. Nebula Electronics who made the once extremely popular Nebula TV Tuners have all but gone silent on customers with regards to their Vista drivers since the release of the operating system in 2007. Despite it having the best TV software around, I have stopped using mine, and so has PR because they are just incomplete and flaky in Vista for well over a year now. Even their forums have dried up with no Nebula feedback.

Back to Creative though. I am a huge admirer of them and their products, well mainly their portable music and peripherals rather than their soundcards, which I have stated have always been top notch build and spec wise, but useless driver wise. They started the whole thing off, they brought music to the very early PC’s, just simple beeps from a soundchip embedded on a bit of PCB back in early 1987. It all went pear shaped as they branched out and kept rehashing soundcards to keep a foothold on the market. However the tide has changed, and they are suffering.

Built in sound capabilities on PC motherboards have already reached the point where they require little system resources and sound superb. Other soundcard manufacturers have been rising over the past year and are building far superior products. Auzentech, Asus, Razer to name a few, and they all work fine in Vista. There is no doubt that Creative are about to feel a backlash that they’re not used to. Lately they have failed to deliver a good sucessor to the Creative Zen Vision:M – their once flagship audio player. They have now seemingly focused on developing peripherals for the Apple iPod – their very own competitors. If this wasn’t enough to be concerned about, I would also be concerned about this, not that it means much to the company as a whole.

Yesterday, Creative via one of their forum moderators stated that they have listened to the feedback (feedback? you sure?) and decided to work with Daniel_K in supporting their driver development programme. Is this a case of way too little, too late? To be truthful, I hope he tells them to shove it. I truly respect, and admire what you’ve done Mr.K. I gave up on Creative cards a long time ago and have never had an XFI so I have no idea how bad it’s drivers were, but poor Creative drivers was why I went out and bought an Auzentech Meridian, a truly awesome bit of kit. Good luck with Creative.

You can read Daniel_K’s full story Here.
Full Creative/Daniel_K story Here.

Good things come to those who wait

I have had quite a few emails over the past week mostly asking where Creative’s answer to the new iPod’s are. Truth be told, there isn’t one – yet.

On August 30th 2007, Creative leaked out images of their next generation replacement for their flagship MP3/Video player – the Zen Vision:M. The new Creative Zen was a flash based player coming in three capacities of 4, 8 and 16GB. The player was almost identical to the ZVM, aside from having SD storage expansion, a superior screen and er, well that’s all sadly. For most users it was a downgrade because Creative, like most MP3 manufacturer’s seemed to be following the trend in moving away from hard disk based players onto Flash based players, which are cheaper to manufacture and more reliable.

The ZVM was one of the best DAP’s (Digial Audio Players) to come out of the portable music industry. In terms of sales it never could match the iPod, but specification wise it was a lot superior and for those owners who had one, they knew how powerful it was within minutes of using the player. It offered heaps of features, was solid and robust albeit a bit of a fatty. It could play almost any video format you could throw at it and it’s screen was far superior over the iPod and the rest of the competition.

September 5th 20076 saw Apple release their ‘new’ iPod range, with the main focus being on the lovely, sleek flash based iPod Touch. This device, whilst inferior to the ZVM feature wise, was enough to even grab my attention and I have one pre-ordered to arrive early October 2007, look out for a review. Creative have no answer to the iPod range, and at the IFA convention where all the Creative fans were hoping to see a new next generation player were left unimpressed by the Zen – hardly an impressive upgrade over the ZVM. Zen fans began to look elsewhere for a next generation player, as did I.

The industry is moving away from hard disk based players, and sales wise it has been clearly shown that flash players are selling much faster. The iPod Nano outsells it’s bigger iPod brothers, whilst Creative’s range of flash players are more popular than their hard disk based models. Apple customers have a good range of models at their disposal, while Creative have let their fans down by offering nothing but a smaller capacity ZVM. From a sales point of view you can’t blame Creative for ditching their support for hard disk based players. Apple can afford to take that risk because their products sell themselves through hype and advertising, the latter of which Creative have been rather slack on.

Where to now?

So Creative’s showing at the IFA was a disappointment and they’ve let down their fans somewhat. Most including yours truly were expecting an X-FI based player but instead we ended up losing our larger hard disk capacity to a flash based product.

The chaps at Tech.co.uk spoke to Alan Devine, Creative’s brand specialist after the IFA convention and he had this to say about Creative’s future. "We’re here today to talk specifically about the newly-announced Creative Zen," he said. "But yes we do have some spectacular new products in the early stages of development in Singapore. The Creative Zen will be our flagship player for the next couple of months at least."

On Creative adding XFI technology to their players, he had this to say. "It’s something we’re actively working on," he said. "The trouble is that the technology is so good that it’s quite battery-intensive, so wouldn’t currently work well in a portable device. There’s nothing arriving in the short term but we are working hard to try and get X-Fi into a player."

As to weather we can expect any more products from them in future, he had this to say. "We have a range of products coming out over the next year. We’ve done well in the entry level with the Zen Stone; the Creative Zen fits nicely mid-market. That leaves a pretty obvious area of the market for us to fill, and I can’t say more than that."

This is certainly good news indeed and proves that Creative haven’t given up on the DAP market yet, they’re branching out making different products, which includes third party devices for the Ipod range as well as their own. They have so far replaced the ZVM with the new Zen, but have yet to see a replacement for their Zen Vision:W – the widescreen version of their ZVM. So Creative will be announcing new players in future, but will they have the storage music enthusiasts really require? We haven’t seen the last of Creative that’s for sure.

Would you kindly bend over…

It’s been a hectic weekend! I wasted money, and then some. Oh, there’s a Bioshock review that has been added to the reviews section. Not the best I might add, but I had to let loose my opinions on such a heavily rated game, especially after seeing it’s rating on Metacritic.com.

After finishing work on Friday, I was in a spending mood. I had about £350 saved up to blow on either clothes, pc/console bits, a low end DSLR Camera or a new MP3 player. The past week saw the release of the next generation of MP3/Video devices from the likes of Creative, Apple, Cowon, Microsoft, Archos and a few other manufacturers. I was already looking for a replacement for my Vision:M despite it being regarded as the best MP3 player on the market. I’ve had the thing for ages now and would like something a bit thinner – an excuse I recently used for buying a new mobile phone, the Sony Ericsson w880i.

I hate iPods. They’re crap, overrated and pale in comparison to the competition out there. The Nano is in a market of its own and I rather like it but the normal iPod is pooh in my opinion. So I’m sad to say that on Friday night I pre-ordered the iPod Touch for around £245 inc the £20 coupon thanks to PR (Order cancelled – the Ipod Touch is a waste of money with the current early screen issues that it has – Darren) It’s storage capacity isn’t that good and as I’ve stated the new Creative Zen even has more features but for once I’d like to see what an Apple product is like. I’ll probably end up hating the thing so look out for a review once it arrives. PR too has ordered one and will no doubt be reviewing when it arrives at the end of September!

As a result of ordering an expensive player that does less than my old one, I ended up installing iTunes – a piece of software I REALLY hate. Inside 3 minutes of running the thing, I found out that I couldn’t access the iTunes store to buy some music because my account wasn’t recognised. Apple Support ended up sorting that out and in an hour I was up and running only to find it had stolen all my file associations. I’m rather surprised on the whole as it’s a lot more stable than before and has more audio content but sod all movies to download. I’m also sorry to say that I’ve ended up buying about 8 tracks from it too!

Oh, on Friday night myself and Deena, who are fast becoming Pizza the Hut addicts ordered a Cheesy Bites Vegetarian Hot One from PIzza Hut. We had been advised by many friends that it was horrible but we went ahead anyway. A kind word of advice for those who are in this situation – IT SUCKS. We couldn’t even finish the thing because it was that gross and it seemed to go cold extremely fast, which doesn’t help. Stick to Deep Pan or the Italian!

What are your worst tunes on your MP3 player?

Today was the launch of the new Apple iPod range over in the states. Needless to say there were good and bad products shown here, the highlight being the iPod Touch thing, which I’m sure people will quickly snap up only to realise that most touchscreen’s aren’t too COOL in use. The iPod Touch doesn’t have that much storage space either, well for some people anyway. For those who require over 16GB of space for their albums, they’ll have to carefully manage what goes onto their new iPod. Anyway, over on our quakenet channel where most of us old-school gamers chat and complain about life in general, PR was getting rather amped up about the new iPod despite stating he wasn’t wanting one.

An hour later after the Apple announcement ended, he’s started pruning away at his iPod music collection… So what follows are various snippets cut out of the channel, because some of the tracks PR has puts my collection to shame!. Let the shaming begin!

[21:26] * PR|PC prunes music collection
[21:28] <PR|PC> Call of Duty 1 soundtrack
[21:28] <Kainz> lol
[21:28] <PR|PC> keeping that
[21:28] <PR|PC> back in the day when they had real orchestras playing real music
[21:31] <PR|PC> 2 Faced by Louise (pre redknapp)
[21:32] <Kainz> LOL
[21:33] <PR|PC> shup!
[21:34] <Kainz> Louise lol
[21:34] <PR|PC> Lighthouse family!
[21:35] <Kainz> Better then Louise!
[21:35] <PR|PC> She’s hot!
[21:35] <Kainz> and now married!
[21:35] <Kainz> Ya got J-LO!?
[21:38] <PR|PC> Fahrenheit Soundtrack
[21:39] <PR|PC> Hang it Up!
[21:39] <Kainz> Teh what
[21:39] <PR|PC> When you play basketball with the cop!
[21:39] <Kainz> lol
[21:49] <PR|PC> Samantha Mumba!
[21:49] <Kainz> lmao
[21:49] <Kainz> and you have the balls to take the piss out of me for my taste!
[21:50] <Kainz> So what iplod bloat are you buying?
[21:50] <PR|PC> Who said I’m buying it?!
[21:50] <PR|PC> Tempted I must say
[21:50] <Kainz> You’re pruning e.g prepping your music collection!
[21:51] <PR|PC> Deleting Sam Mumba is hardly pruning!
[21:51] <Kainz> What about louise!
[21:51] <PR|PC> Gone
——–
[21:56] <PR|PC> Feels so good – Mel B
[21:56] <Kainz> wtf man!
[22:00] <PR|PC> Moving too fast – Artful Dodger!
[22:00] <Kainz> lol
[22:01] <PR|PC> aha
[22:01] <PR|PC> Love don’t cost a thing
[22:01] <PR|PC> J. Lo
[22:01] <Kainz> LOL
[22:01] <Kainz> Keep going!
[22:01] <PR|PC> That’s the only one
[22:01] <Kainz> This is good blog quotes ammunation!
[22:02] <PR|PC> got rid of all the U2 shat so far
[22:03] <Kainz> Hope you didn’t get rid of With or Without You!
[22:03] <PR|PC> Kameo: Elements of Power soundtrack
[22:03] <PR|PC> just deleted that
[22:03] <Kainz> I’ve gots taht bookmarked!
[22:03] <Kainz> Yer thats another thing. This iplod better have bookmarking ffs
[22:04] <PR|PC> Perhaps I should just buy yours when you hate it
[22:04] <Kainz> Sod off, if i’m mad enough to buy one i’ll be selling it high!
[22:05] <Kainz> Gonna upload a tune for you to listen to
[22:05] <Kainz> Possibly the best ingame sample i’ve ever heard
[22:06] <Kainz> Gotta love upping at 130kbps lol
[22:06] <PR|PC> Torn – Natalie Imbruglia
[22:06] <Kainz> Thats what I listened to!
[22:06] <PR|PC> still like that
[22:06] <Kainz> Back during the diablo days!
[22:11] <soth`> what are wireless headphones like?
[22:11] <AntyInfrance> which gmae is it actually from
[22:11] <Kainz> All those tracks were converted from mod format to mp3
[22:11] <PR|PC> I always liked the original Medal of Honour title soundtrack
[22:11] <Kainz> unreal
[22:11] <AntyInfrance> they’re a lot like wired headphones soth but they don’t have wires
[22:11] <Kainz> lol
[22:11] * soth` slaps AntyInfrance around a bit with a large trout
——-
[22:20] <Kainz> Looking at WMP, my oldest track on my Zen is No Doubt-Don’t Speak. Ripped off the first CD i ever bought
[22:20] <PR|PC> Hearsay – Popstars
[22:20] <Kainz> Ah crap its not the oldest lol
[22:20] <Kainz> HEAR SAY!?!!
[22:21] <PR|PC> Remember listening to that on my minidisc car player on the way to my first IT job
[22:21] * Joins: Morkith (~sahorton@Morkith[FAST].users.quakenet.org)
[22:21] * Q sets mode: +o Morkith
[22:23] <Kainz> Fugees – The Score album is my oldest
[22:23] <AntyInfrance> you are not fucking real
[22:23] <Kainz> Bought that during my uni days around 95-98
[22:24] <PR|PC> Bring it all back / Two in a Million / S Club Party!
[22:24] <PR|PC> Wheres never had a dream come true tho ffs!
[22:24] <Kainz> LOL
[22:30] <PR|PC> Call on Me – Eric Prydz
[22:30] <PR|PC> tho not the video
[22:30] * Kainz starts scrolling up for ammo
[22:31] <PR|PC> Do it for you – Bryan Adams
[22:36] <Kainz> I think he’s still in shock at you having HEAR SAY
[22:36] <PR|PC> 4 tracks from Tiberiun Sun
[22:39] <PR|PC> Oh you’ll like this
[22:39] <PR|PC> Sisqo
[22:39] <PR|PC> Thong Song! /o\
[22:39] <Kainz> lol
[22:40] <PR|PC> I blame my old work place for that they had it on the in store rotation and I was pressurised in to liking it
[22:40] <Kainz> Htf could you remotely even like the thong song
[22:40] <AntyInfrance> didn’t they make a painfully true to life sitcome about you a few years ago
[22:40] <PR|PC> Someone there used to pretend he was sisqo and kept calling me Jonathong :/

iWant!!

This is the replacement for the Creative Vision:M, considered as the best MP3 player on the market. Recently Creative have stated that the Vision:M is an EoL (End of the line) product so a replacement for their top of the range player is more or less due and boy have they surprised Zen fans with their latest effort.

Yesterday, Creative leaked out photo’s of their new Zen, a super-slim flash based player, which arrives in 4, 8, and 16GB capacities, as well as having a high quality 2.6" display and an SD card expansion slot. If memory serves me correctly it is the first 16GB flash player to hit the market too. People could say that 16GB isn’t enough and a hard disk, which the Vision:M has is a better feature. While I’d agree with that, you have to admit that RAM prices are falling through the floor and if 16GB isn’t enough, then a simple SD card upgrade should suffice. At the end of the day, flash ram is always the best solution, even though it has been expensive in the past. For that reason alone I will be after it and doing an in-depth review!

It also seems that Creative have been listening to the fans out there. Expansion capabilities, AAC support and an FM tuner are amongst the most requested features by Zen fans for a next generation player and the new Zen has the lot.

The MP3 market is about to receive a kick up the rear end as Apple will show off their next generation of iPods on September 5th. I predict touch screens and an iPhone style interface for their new models. The Zen hits most US stores next month in September. The Zen will make it’s debut at the IFA convention on August 31st. I will update this upon finding out about a UK launch date. The player has now been added to the Creative Website.

Features:

• Capacity: 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB’s
• 2.5" display with 16.7 million colors (320 x 240)
• SD Expansion Slot (with support for SDHC)
• Audio: MP3, WMA (and WMA-DRM), AAC (supports iTunes Plus tracks) and Audible
• Video: WMV, Divx, Xvid, MJPEG, and TIVO to Go
• FM tuner and Voice Recorder
• Battery Life: 25 hours of Audio, 5 hours for Video
• Dimensions: 55 x 83 x 11.3mm (65g)
• Pricing: $149 (£75), $199 (£100), $299 (£150) respectively

Update: The Creative website now has an interactive Flash demo showing off it’s features. Here’s a YouTube video of some lucky goit who has nabbed himself one! (Switch off your speakers lol)

Better video at DailyMotion.com