>From: Brian Hartgen [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >I wanted to let people know about a very affordable easy to use portable >media player which Anna told me about and which I have just purchased. >It is called the Zen Stone player from Creative, and it costs 25 pounds >or 40 Us dollars. The player was released on 3 May this year and so is >very new and is available just about everywhere you can think of >including retail outlets and Amazon. > >The player is extremely small indeed and weighs less than one ounce and >has no screen. It has a mode switch on the side (for cycling between >some features such as repeat, play all or shuffle), and a typical wheel: >up and down for volume, left and right to skip tracks or within a track, >and play/stop in the centre. The mode switch, if pressed and held, will >allow you to skip to the next album or folder which is a nice feature. >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. You can simply >copy and paste using Windows Explorer. However, there is software which >can be downloaded called Creative Media Light, 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. There's a bit of >scripting needing to be done with that, but I intend to issue some free >JAWS scripts for this if I can get that particular item to work. Apart >from that and one or two small issues of labelling buttons which I have >done, the software is quite usable. The good thing about the software >is that when the player is connected to the computer for charging, the >status line will report the percentage of the charging process. > >Now to the final great feature. This player will allow you to play DRM >Windows Media files and Audible content. When playing Audible content >(up to format 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 quite acceptable. > >If anyone would like to know more about the player please let me know. >But if you want something really simple on which to listen to music, >podcasts and particularly Audible books, this is a very inexpensive >option. If it does play DRM content, and I've no reason to doubt the >claims made by the manufacturers, then this kind of player could be the >start of people moving away from the iTunes music store (thank goodness) >and to other music providers who offer DRM content. > >Brian Hartgen >More information about portable media devices can be obtained from the >Portable Player Portal. Please visit >www.hartgen.org >and choose the Portable Player Portal link. > >E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >SKYPE: brianhartgen >PHONE (UK): 0208-133-7186 >PHONE (US): 213-985-3581
Regards Steve Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype: steve1963 MSN Messenger: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... http://www.pc-audio.org To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
