This Is An Advertorial
LT gave me a demo Creative Zen MP3 Player (no keep). They want an advertorial, so here goes. I had to do some editing to make this commercially viable. Oh, and for anyone serious, specifically from the Colombo Rotary Club, I apologize in advance.
The Creative Zen looks like a iPod that’s been brutally beaten and given crude reconstructive surgery. But let’s ignore that and just read the press release. Creative has a cure for iPod envy. The Zen Touch has molested me. At 20 GIGs (5,000 songs) it’s a whole hard-drive full of music. And it feels like it. The thing is fucking heavy. When you get home, plug it into your computer and tell it to automagically save your latest downloads to the device. I haven’t got this feature to work, but it’s in the specs. What I have done is completely freeze up the machine for half-an-hour. If you want to move all your playlists and folders over, just drag-and-drop. Adding songs is well fast, about 10 seconds per song. It took me half-an-hour to get the software to install (plus a restart). If you’re dashing off to work in the morning you can load up a new playlist as you’re drinking your tea. It’s got plenty battery power to keep the music playing for 24 hours, enough to get you through a week’s worth of Colombo traffic. To pick a song you just slide your finger up and down the touchpad and hit the OK button for play. Like a clitoris. Seriously. The manual looks like the Joy of Sex.
The Zen also has normal buttons, which make the device easy to operate from inside your pocket. The headphones are plenty loud, like a clock radio blaring away at 6 in the morning. Directly in your ear. My God this is torture. After switching to decent phones it sounds good, hence I am able to say… and the sound coming out of the machine is excellent. It even comes with a custom equalizer to let you deafen yourself with bass.
Once you’re listening to music nothing else matters much, but the Zen looks good as well. WTF? Who is writing this? The screen glows a gentle blue and the fonts scroll easily across. Did I mention that the screen is vomit green without the backlight? And that first line wasn’t a joke, this is seriously what an iPod would look like if you ran it over with a car and let Dr. Nick Riviera patch it together. The front is white, but then you get this computer-grey border sneaking in. By the time you turn it over the iPod facade is completely gone. It’s just a dark grey box. It has three different fonts on the front and one more for the screen, all of which suck. You do not need 4 fonts for 4 square inches. Plus, how many names does this machine have? That’s all. I just wanted to let you know that whoever said this ‘looks good’ is a paid flack. In short, this is stiff competition for the iPod, stiff as in dead. It’s attractive, spacious, and Rs. 6000 cheaper. And Buddhist.
this is a printable edit:
Creative has a cure for iPod envy. The Zen Touch. At 20 GIGs (5,000 songs) it’s a whole hard-drive full of music. When you get home, plug it into your computer and tell it to automagically save your latest downloads to the device. If you want to move all your playlists and folders over, just drag-and-drop. Adding songs is well fast, about 10 seconds per song. If you’re dashing off to work in the morning you can load up a new playlist as you’re drinking your tea. It’s got plenty battery power to keep the music playing for 24 hours, enough to get you through a week’s worth of Colombo traffic. To pick a song you just slide your finger up and down the touchpad and hit the OK button for play.
The Zen also has normal buttons, which make the device easy to operate from inside your pocket. The headphones are plenty loud and the sound coming out of the machine is excellent. It even comes with a custom equalizer to let you deafen yourself with bass. Once you’re listening to music nothing else matters much, but the Zen looks good as well. The screen glows a gentle blue and the fonts scroll easily across. In short, this is stiff competition for the iPod. It’s attractive, spacious, and Rs. 6000 cheaper. And Buddhist.
The Mahavamsa (a history of Sri Lanka) is full of conflicts between generals and kings. Usually, the more bloodthirsty and unscrupulous would win. Our current (elected) ruler Mahinda Rajapaksa has had his own general conflicts, namely with one Sarath Fonseka. In the old days Fonseka would have staged a coup, as in literally try to cut of Mahinda’s head, and Mahinda would – if that failed – tie him to four elephants and split his parts asunder. Can’t do that shit anymore. Instead Fonseka ran for office and lost and Mahinda tossed him in jail.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
This is highly dubious. Miss Travel is a travel/social networking site that connects ‘Generous’ and ‘Attractive’ travelers. To, like, travel together, I guess. It all seems a bit like arranged prostitution and trafficking. This is part of a broader online trend to connect rich men to younger, attractive women. Sites like 
Hey, do you know anywhere in Colombo where I can buy an Apple iPod?
Brilliant, just brilliant. I’m keeping a pdf of this page.
And I like your megacognition art piece.
Very occult, that. In the good way.
I recognize the Creative Zen Touch to be superior to Apple’s iPod in a variety of ways. Battery life on the Touch is unrivaled, as is sound quality. Had Apple not gone and erected impassable patents on the very simple scroll-wheel interface for its iPod, the Creative players would be the obvious choice. From using both a fourth-generation (4g) iPod and a Creative Zen Touch 40gig, I must say that both players are about the same.
Creative’s players have an as-of-yet unrivaled sound quality, and tend to be far more durable than the iPods are. iPod’s battery life can be considered non-existent, whereas Creative seems to provide the 12 hours (for the Zen Xtra line), and 24 hours or so (for the Touch) as promised. When one takes the time to become accustomed to the Zen jog wheel (For the Xtra line) or the slider (For the Touch), about the only thing the iPod can offer is a cult mentality. Even better, the Xtra line of players allows for a self-replacable battery, with the Touch rumored to soon follow. I, for one, would not want to shell out approximately $100 to have my entire iPod replaced when the battery ceases to charge, and have none of my music backed up for me.*
Buy an iPod if you want to fit in, and have money to burn. Go with Creative if you actually want to listen to your music, and care about its quality.
The Creative players work, have superior sound quality and battery life, and are highly durable. Although they may not be part of a brain-washed, cultish phenomenon, they are players at a highly competetive price, and well worth the money.
Equally bad, if not worse things, can be said about the iPod. Both players appeal to different persuasions. The Creative players outperform Apple’s players in actually playing MP3s with a wonderful sound-quality, in battery life, and in durability. Last I checked, a person should buy an MP3 player to listen to his music, and for little else.
*As mentioned on Apple’s iPod battery “replacement” page, the battery cannot actually be replaced, unless you wish to do this on your own and take a huge risk in damaging a highly expensive piece of equipment. The entire iPod is replaced, and none of your music is backed up for you. Creative takes a somewhat different stance to this, and if looks and following blindly are not your strong point, the self-replacable battery in the Xtra players will save you some trouble down the line.
I am certain there are some typos here. I would expect that these typos would be excused.
just thought you all should know this: i dropped my ipod and it stopped working. I called apple to ask them for help and was told that to even speak to a technician it would cost me fifty bucks. just to speak to someone!!! i think they must really care.
[...] Colombo Critic: This could theoretically replace the fawning press releases that pass for reviews in the Sri Lankan press with honest reviews. I am guilty of selling out as well. For an example check out this Creative Zen Review where all the honest parts have been crossed out. But I digress. Colombo Critic has all the infrastructure but no posts, so hopefully it will pick up. One thing I’ve learned is that design is always secondary to content. I call this the Pilawoos Principle. It doesn’t matter how crap your site is if the content is good and timely. [...]
haha this is hilarious and the best part your so right. although itunes can be a bitch when it comes to use and style its the ipod.