The Nomad Jukebox is an MP3 player (see my article on MP3 if you're unfamiliar with these).  Unlike most players, the Jukebox has an internal hard disk for storing songs, giving you an incredible 6 Gigabytes of MP3 music

With that much music, must be a hassle finding the songs you want?  Nope.  The LCD screen allows you to look at the music sorted by artist, by album, by genre, or by playlists you have prepared (more on that later).  If you want the details of a song (who did that?), you can view the ID3 tags, giving information such as artist or album.

The Jukebox comes with a nice pair of headphones, but it also has two line-out jacks.  I've got it playing through my stereo, and it sounds good.

Getting the music into the Jukebox is fairly simple.  It hooks up to your computer using USB, and includes software for both Mac and PC that can convert your existing audio CDs to MP3 files, can write MP3 files out to the Jukebox, and can set up playlists.  The software is very easy to use and takes care of what needs doing in a very straighforward way.

The Jukebox isn't perfect.  At $500, it's not cheap.  The use of a hard disk makes it a bit more fragile (dropping onto a tiled floor is a bad idea) and also goes through batteries faster than most players.  Creative includes two sets of rechargeable batteries, and the Jukebox can recharge batteries on its own.

Perfect or not, though, the Jukebox is a fantastic player.  All your music in that one machine, great sound, easy hookup to stereo systems, well-integrated.  The Nomad Jukebox gets 9.5 out of 10 Ooos.

UPDATE: Since this was written, things have changed. The Nomad Jukebox has been imrpoved. The battery life is longer, and it now can hold 40 Gigabytes of storage.

More importantly, it has been dethrowned as the ultimate MP3 player by Apple's iPod.

Donald Brown

Nomad Jukebox, by Creative Technology, $499 for 40 Gig, $399 for 20 Gig, $249 for 10 Gig.