I obtained this player in Jan 2007 and enjoyed it for about three months; user-friendly and sounded silky smooth. Sadly, it never did interface properly with my computer. Helpful buds pointed out work-arounds to get music onto it.

After the three month mark, it hung. Permanently (stopped charging, wouldn’t turn on.)

Maybe it was because I upgraded to Vista? That turned out not to be it because it still didn’t work on other PCs.

I began a friendly exchange of email with Creative tech support. Well, I was friendly, but they were indifferent.

The staff gave me a return authorization and charged me $25 (plus I paid shipping) to test it in their lab. How about that? They sell you junk and you pay to unjunk it.

Someone at the lab gave up. The spaghetti code in the zen or the crappy hardware stumped the technicians so they replaced the product. I got no information about what was wrong with it.

But guess what? The replacement isn’t working either; I need to replace the USB cable (Creative products will only charge/connect with Creative’s proprietary USB cable, wall charger, or car charger. The nice surprise is that you can purchase these on line for a bulky shipping fee.

Skip the dang thing. Get an Ipod Nano 3rd gen