Feeling Creative?

Even before I found this article, I have been told that these Creative Zen Micro media players are a hot item this holiday season. While they may not have the marketing pizazz of the Apple iPod, they are a rock-solid device that deserves our consideration during those after Christmas sales coming up.

All product markets tend toward commodity—especially tech markets. The innovator brings a new product to market, and then me-too vendors follow. The market then becomes saturated, and the race is on to see who can produce the new widget at the lowest cost. At the same time, players look for ways to differentiate—the Zen Micro falls under this category as a differentiated follower. What makes it different? An integrated FM tuner, the ability to record FM broadcasts, a voice recorder, and the ability to store calendar/contact/to-do information from Outlook.

Unlike other Zen offerings, Creative has priced this one at parity ($249) with its iPod competitor, though Creative does offer 20% more storage capacity, and 50% more rated battery time. But it lacks the iPod’s online source of DRM-protected songs, though it can play songs that use Windows Media DRM, since it supports Microsoft’s MTP protocol. Creative is developing plug-ins for Napster and Musicmatch so the device will be directly recognized by these apps, but these aren’t yet available. A company official stated they will be out before year’s end.