Creative Zen MicroPhoto - Software?

[Aker]

My friend has a Creative Zen MicroPhoto and was wondering if there are any other (better) alternatives to the Creative media software available. It would also be great if you guys had any other recommendations for improvements.

Thanks!

 

[MaloS]

The software offered by creative is perfectly fine and rather comfortable. The drag-and-drop option is available through windows media player also. The ripping software to mp3s is great, as is the conversion software. Its quick and it goes up to highest quality. I'd stick to it really, although making your own playlists is up to you. I leave it to the player to organize music by artists/albums and use that, since I generally tend to listen to music by albums (to maximize the recording's impact).

Edit: one cute thing about the player - avoid pulling out the battery when it is on - it won't screw up per say, it recreates all the libraries without losing files, but some files get screwed up. Latter files on some of my extensive playlists (when i used em originally) had random pieces of other songs from the list included in em, which made for very messy listening. This only results from pulling the battery out when player is running.

 

[Aker]

Thank you for your reply! I'm not sure why she didn't want to use the Creative software in the first place, but I think she was having some sort of problems with it. I'll find out and try to see if just an update will fix it. Which Creative software does one generally need for typical song transfer and organization? I don't know the names, so looking at the downloads just confuses me.

 

[TVaudio]

Redchair Notmad is a great alternative. I have been using it for about a year and love it. They have a free version you can try, but some of the cool options are disabled.
http://www.redchairsoftware.com/notmad/

 

[khbaur330162]

You can download Creative Media Source off the Creative support website if she lost the install CD. (if this is in fact the problem)

Apart form that, I'm pretty sure Media Monkey syncs with the Creative line up. I know it does with Apple's offerings as well as my iRiver (as if I needed software to sync with my iRiver), so I see no reason as to why it wouldn't with her Zen Micro.

Just out of curiosity, MaloS, I don't doubt your scenario's validity in the slightest, but why would you ever remove the battery while it's on and running? Did you do this by accident or something? The Micro's battery is lodged pretty well in there if my memory serves me right. I mean, it's been probably over a year since I've owned one, but I thought the battery was a rather non-issue for me.

 

[TVaudio]

The original Zen Micro had an issue of locking up on startup if you did not pause the song you were playing before shutting down. The only way to do anything was to remove the battery to start over. And then it would rebuild the library, but errors would then be created and you usually had to replace some songs as they would have weird artifacts or just end suddenly.