Creative Zen – Absoblogginlutely!

Synctoy impressions.

By Andy on Thursday, August 4, 2005

Mike linked to Synctoy’s release and I downloaded it yesterday and started playing.
I did have one peculiarity in that the second time I did a sync after removing the usb disk and plugging it in again it decided to sync some files again (even though nothing would have changed). This has, so far, been the only time it happened but I’m very impressed with the developers as they saw my comment on Mikes blog about this and then emailed me to ask for more information on the problem. Totally unexpected as this is a powertoy, not supported by Microsoft AND my comments are not visible on Mikes homepage.

I really like the product and at the moment have 4 syncs set up.
2 synchronise the download locations of firefox and thunderbird to my usb disk. Therefore when a new extension is available, I download it to one place, normally on the main computer but it could be on a laptop or remote computer if an extension is released whilst i’m using a different pc) and then when I synchronise the usb disk back home, the latest extension is updated back to the home pc. Now I don’t have to worry that I have all the files needed to install firefox (or thunderbird) at a ~~friends~~free client’s house.
The 3rd synchronisation contains all the gpx’s I download for geocaching. These files are retrieved via email within gsak and I can sync these to the usb drive for use on another pc automatically using “C:\Program Files\Microsoft\SyncToy\synctoy.exe -R” after the download withing gsak.
The 4th synchronisation is an entire copy of the usb drive onto disk. This way I have a backup copy in case I loose the disk or it gets corrupted.
I will be adding some more functionality to synchronise the gpx files onto the SD card used in my pocketpc for caching out in the wild and possibly to synchronise mp3 files from my pc to the creative zen (if thats possible – not had chance to try that just yet.)

Creative Zen

New creative zenholster

By Andy on Wednesday, June 15, 2005

I sat down in the car the other day and the belt clip for my creative zen snapped in half. The zen had been pushed up by the action and snapped the plastic. I sent an email off to Creative for a RMA number and after a couple of days correspondance back and forth they said they would send me a new case foc. However they said that they would make this an exception and that I must not sit down with the zen clipped to my waste. This seems a bit daft to me as a hard disk player is not an ideal choice for listening to when jogging or doing something active, therefore you are likely to use this when sitting down and now they are saying that you shouldn’t use it?
I’m still grateful for them to replace it under warrenty and am looking at getting something like a glorified bumbag to put all my electronic gadgets in. I have found a nice CityWalker pack bag at the container store but it costs $35! This does have pockets for anything and everything and I think would be ideal for putting the gps, camera, pda,zen,notebook,pen and geocaching goodies in.

Creative Zen

Mp3 player arrives

By Andy on Friday, April 29, 2005

My Creative Zen xtra arrived yesterday and as with all electronic things nowadays I had to wait 4 hours for the battery to fully charge. By then it was bedtime so I only got the chance to have a quick listen to some of the classical tunes before going to bed. However I’ve had a chance to use it a bit today and here are my thoughts.