Creative goes micro with two new MP3 players

By Ed Oswald | Published January 7, 2008, 5:47 PM

Creative used CES to debut two new low-cost music players with built in speakers on Monday. Added to the company's existing Zen Stone and Zen Stone Plus product lines, both feature 2 GB of capacity at prices of $49.99 and $59.99 respectively.

While the Stone will just include the built-in speaker, the Stone Plus adds quite a few additional features, including a screen, FM radio, voice recording, clock with stopwatch and customizable equalizer settings.

Creative's Zen Stone Plus MP3 player

Like all of its recent players, the devices will be able to play back iTunes Plus files, which are AAC files with no DRM restrictions. Four colors will be made available including metallic black, dark blue, pink, and champagne.

In a departure from previous players. the Zen Stones would come with no software for transferring files to the device. Instead, Creative is telling users to simply drag the files from their hard drive onto the device, much like people currently do with flash drives.

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They look better than the shuffle and have plenty more features. But I might not call it a "stone". That's a bit like calling your cd blanks "zen coasters"!

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So what do we have that my years old muvo tx doesn't have?

Well it is 2GB instead of 512MB and costs a third as much.

....and that's about it. Hmm and now it comes in a weird and annoying looking form factor.

Does anyone buy these zen stone things?

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"In a departure from previous players. the Zen Stones would come with no software in order to transfer files to the device. Instead, Creative is telling users to simply drag the files from their hard drive onto the device, much like people currently do with flash drives."

And it took how long for this amazing idea to arrive ?
Its no wonder apple have run away with the market when the blindingly obvious has been overlooked for so long.

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