Common Sense for the Biochemist

I am waiting for a PCR reaction to finish up so I thought I would give a little writeup about a new piece of equipment (toy) I just bought. A couple of weeks ago I purchased the 40GB version of the Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen MP3 player. My rationale for this purchase is that I can use it as a portable hard drive (which I have, and it works very well for this purpose). I still can't decide whether I like the user interface and button arrangement on the device yet or not. However, the software for interfacing with your computer is very easy to use. The only drawback I see is that to access your files or music by an interfacing computer, that computer must have Creative's software installed on it. It is also a little bulky and awkward when compared to an iPOD. I have about 800 songs on it and I have backed-up my work hard-drive and still have about 25 GB left. All-in-all, I think it was a good purchase. The fact that it was about $150 less than a similar iPOD makes it even better.