Nomad Information

Music and voice recording too?

Aside from aesthetics, new functionality has also been embedded in the Nomad to make it a "must-have" item. The Nomad includes an FM Tuner with 10 presets and a built-in microphone for up to 2 hours of voice recording on the 32MB version, which can then be transferred to the PC. Note that MP3s cannot be transferred back into a computer (at least not in Creative's included software).

Rock the cradle

A docking cradle will also be included, which bears a striking functional resemblance to 3Com's Palm PDA. The cradle is a slightly large affair, and connects to a PC's parallel port to facilitate file transfer and management. In addition, the cradle will function as a desktop charger for the two AAA nickel metal-hydride batteries, also included in the package.

Interesting memory facts

The Nomad will be available in two versions, 32MB and 64MB. The 64MB version is identical to the base 32MB version, but will ship with an additional 32MB SmartMedia flash card installed, to double the available memory. This can be used for both MP3 or voice data, and there is a good chance that the upcoming 64MB Smartmedia cards will be supported as well.

Anyone who has a Rio and a digital camera may have tried to use their camera's flash card to increase the memory of their Rio, only to have the player format the card to a proprietary file system, rendering it useless to the camera!

Creative is proud to say that the Nomad won't have this problem. Although it also uses a proprietary format for SmartMedia cards, a header is automatically inserted during the formatting sequence which will allow an SSFDC-compliant device (such as aforementioned digital camera) to re-format the card correctly.