Creative Zen StoneCreative Zen Stone Creative Zen Stone
The Zen Stone from Creative is a small, light weight, affordable player, ideal for blind people since it has no screen. It is available at the time of writing from many retailers and on-line stores, and the price is approximately 25 pounds or 40 US dollars. Description of the Zen stone The Zen Stone weighs 0.55 ounces, and measures 2.1 inches x 1.4 inches x 0.5 inches. On the front face can be found a wheel now associated with many similar devices. Holding down the button within the centre of the wheel for a second, and then releasing it, represents Power On/Off or Stop/Power Off. Pressing the key lightly is the Pause/Resume Play control. Pressing the right-hand side of the wheel skips to the next track or when held down continually skips forward within a track. Pressing the left-hand side of the wheel (or holding it down continually) moves in the opposite direction. The up and down sections increase or decrease the volume level. The final three items on the unit consist of the Headphone jack, the USB2 socket and the Mode slide Switch. In addition to possessing its own features, the Mode switch deal with the behaviour of the left and right sides of the wheel. If you slide the Mode switch to the position farthest from the headphone jack, the playing order is shuffled. In the middle position, all tracks play in order and then repeat. If you push the switch toward the headphone jack and release it quickly, you skip to the first file in the next folder. If you're playing an Audible book and push the switch toward the headphone jack, hold it a couple of seconds, and then release, Forward and Back move you between sections in the book. Useful Information The Zen Stone can accommodate up to 1 GB of storage. The great thing about this player is that no special software is required to transfer regular WMA or MP3 files to it. The device is able to be used on any number of machines so there is no special activation forming a relationship between itself and a specific number of computers. You can simply copy and paste MP3 and WMA files using Windows Explorer. However, there is software which can be downloaded called Creative Media Lite, which allows you to not only rip tracks from audio CD, but in addition once the audio extraction has taken place, the music is automatically transferred to the player. So for a person who does not want to get into the business of copying music to the player, this could be very good. When connected to the computer for charging, Creative Media Lite will advise you how much space is available on the player together with the battery charge status. The software is also used to update the firmware of the unit. Free scripts for JAWS for Windows are available from this page containing the following functionality: List of 8 items • Most of the buttons speak their names as you use Tab, Shift+Tab or Insert+Tab. There is still a bit of work to be done in the Settings Dialog of the CD ripper as the fields do not speak correctly but this will come in time. • When you Tab into the main drive list or the Zen player contents list, the individual list is identified. • F12 activates the Audio CD rip Button. • Usefully, you can now check or uncheck the songs to be extracted from a CD from the list by pressing Space Bar. JAWS will announce if the song is checked or unchecked. • ALT+Control+V will allow you to set the maximum volume of the player and access the parental controls. • ALT+Control+U enables updates to be accessed via the Internet. • F11 tells you the charge of the player and the amount of free space. • A small amount of Hotkey Help is available. list end It is hoped that Window-Eyes Set Files will be made available from this page shortly. Now to the final great feature. This player will allow you to play DRM Windows Media files and Audible content. When playing Audible content (Formats 2 and 3 only), and you stop playing the book and move to another folder, your position within the book is retained! I think that the storage capacity of the player, and the fact that the quality of format 3 is quite listenable, makes the use of this format acceptable. Summary If you want something really simple on which to listen to music, podcasts and particularly Audible books, this is a very inexpensive option. Because the unit is capable of playing music in the DRM (digital Rights Management) format, downloading music from supported web sites and listening to it is very achievable. The unit will not at this time function with files obtained from downloadable music subscription services. You can use Windows Explorer to copy and organise folders up to three deep, meaning that you can organise your folder structure into an artists/album format. However, the free Creative Media Lite software gives some nice useful additions. When transferring Audible books to the device, you should do so using Audible Manager. Transferring the files in this way adds additional files to the Zen Stone for retaining your position within a book. Transferring the book in any other way will ensure the book does not play. The position within conventional audio files is retained, even if the player is switched off, until you change to an alternative file. Links for this Section Download Creative Media Lite Download JAWS Scripts for creative Media Lite. Back to the Portable Player Portal Source: http://www.hartgen.org/zenstone.html To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
