Here a link to the first test (that I've read anyway) of the new Creative Labs Jukebox3, the new creative Nomad.

They seemed to have learned from the past : it now has a firewire interface (thank God!), has shrinked in size (dunno by how much, but there's a photo on one of the pages with the unit opened and going by the size of the 2.5" laptop drive in it it has shrunk a great deal), and it can be used as a portable drive more or less.

It's still no iPod, but certainly a step in the right direction...

Anybody already tested this little unit?

My friend's sister works for Creative Europe and I played about with a prototype one of these a while back.

It's quite nice but it still feels "cheap" compared to an iPod because it's made of plastic. It's still not quite pocket sized though in my opinion, not unless you have really big pockets. Sound quality was good though and it's got the gimmicky EAX stuff still which I've yet to find anybody using for more than 5 minutes

If you accept it's not going to be an iPod replacement then it's a good HD based player which also records.

I can't really comment too much on the actual user interface as what I was using wasn't the finished product and I've not tried an actual one.

- Trevor

I posted this news April 20th. See here. I guess everyone was too stoned on 4/20 to notice.

Ooops!

Though I check these boards every day, somehow I must have mised that one!
Just a quick fact, they actually *did* design it like the original nomad . Exactly like the original Nomad I would say, only smaller.
Of course, I would have preferred it too if they had given it the shape of the Nomad IIc

*/me goes hiding in a corner now*

That's a pretty solid little player. Thing is though, at least 95% of the free time I have to listen to music is either in my car (1 empeg there) or at my desk (another one there) or at one of my other computers (shared mp3s and speakers there. So I couldn't justify purchasing one. Cool none the less.

John