A bit of a review really to the Skydive that I (finally) completed on the 5th May..

It originally was booked on the 1st March, the day before my 21st birthday. I was so very nervous at this point, I had hyped the day up and everyone was backing me 100% to go out there and get it done. So an early start saw Will and I motor over to Langer airfield to nose around and see what the crack was. Turns out, we couldn’t jump that day as it was far too windy. They’re only allowed to jump if the winds are less than 24mph; on this particular day, the winds were reaching some 56mph!! So as you can imagine, you jump in Nottingham, and land in Derby! No thanks!! Any who, we took the briefings, did some training and waited around to see if the wind died. Now, at this point, I am raring to go! The adrenaline had already started, and I was GUTTED that we were made to go home and re-book for a second day.

The second booking was cancelled, as was the third. A month or two has passed by now, the Sponsorship money has been collected, and everyone had forgot about our jump.

A very last minute booking saw us back at the airfield on the May Bank Holiday. A PERFECT day, we couldn’t have asked for any better!!

Again, an early*ish* start over and out there, sort out our accounts/charity side of things, a cup of tea, a bacon sandwich and a phone call to the spectators to tell them that we’re all clear!! Now I’m worried..

People arrive, the sun’s shining, the kettles brewing and some professional divers come screaming in over our heads, filling me with confidence. Our names are called over the loudspeaker to go and get geared up, here we go.

So out we stroll, the jokes on us, we look ridiculous!! The fact I couldn’t walk without some ‘chaffing’ didn’t help the situation either. My sexy spandex helmet and goggles just put the icing on the cake.. Oh hell, let’s dance!



A few final goodbyes, a signature, and we were off to the plane-of-doom! Sat in my instructors lap, he attaches me to his harness, “one, two, three and there’s four! Good to go!!”, “yeah, right! I'm raring to go!! *eek!*” The plane cabin reminded me of our old ‘under the stairs’ cupboard, not a great place to start the adventure. To make matters worse, it was our pilots first time flying with passengers! ‘Brilliant! Okay so, credit given where due, he was okay.. But I could have done better (“,)

My instructor’s tapping me on the shoulder frequently and showing me the altimeter, it was a steady old climb up there, took approx 15minutes to reach 13,000ft. The windows were positioned high too, so I couldn’t even see out. Now, I’ve payed for an extra chap (a hippy..) to jump along side us, to film. Seemed a good idea at the time, but now, he’s in my face!! This is where I’m most nervous; I don’t need your bushy, dirty, gangly beard flapping around in my face!! Go away!!

The shutter-door is opened without warning, I felt the vacuum pressurise the cabin instantly. It was cold, loud, and quite nerve wrecking! (Will, you might think differently, fair play, but I was bricking it! Haha) A few of the solo jumpers slide on the gog’s, nudge themselves forward to the opening and just… go! What in the hell.. Charity or no charity, this is insane!!! My friend, Will, was two jumps before me, I watched them shimmy to the edge, and again, without warning, they were just gone. I think this way must be ‘alright’, as you don’t really get to look down, you can’t think too much into it, because by the time you do, you’re dropping at a ridiculous rate and falling to the ground! I HOWEVER, was hung. Like a pair of old socks of the washing line.. Purely down to the fact that I had payed for a video, and the hippy camera man had to climb out the plane, position him self on the wing and film me as I spent the last few moments in the place.

This situation, (as seen on the video..) is no fun. So I’m in the jump ‘ready’ position, my legs are tucked well under the planes underside, my arms are crossed and my head is back. My instructors asks me to let go, wave, smile, laugh and generally be OK with the fact I’m being filmed. I wish he was taken out by a bird or similar at this instance, I just didn’t need him to be there! The powerful winds, the goggles that were digging in, the noise, the bitterness of the air, just added up into one big “oh my god” moment. Looking back on the video, yes, I look ridiculous, and petrified, and you’re right, I was!

“OKAY, and ONE, TWO……” he didn’t even give me a “THREE”. I’d been pushed, but “wow!” For the first few seconds, we were head first, tumbling down to the ground, I just didn’t know what to think.. It’s just, epic. You could see for absolute miles, it was so very clear (but so very cold!), it was just a hell of an experience.

10/20 seconds into our free fall, I realise the hippies back, “SMIIILE!” Back on the ground, before our jump, the guys said “you want to be screaming and shouting so that your breathing comes without thinking…”, I had this message stuck in my mind.. But the more I thought about it, the more dry-mouthed I became. Gasping for air, whilst still try to look “cool” (In that outfit? Yeah, right..). “Whay! *thumbs up!*”

The total free-fall time was 50 seconds, which, when you’re dropping from the sky, seems a long, long time. Towards the end, I had become more comfortable with my breathing, everything was looking good, I had now started to enjoy this experience. Without warning, the canopy/chute was deployed.. If you pause (or watch slow-mo) at this point, my face is hilarious. Fella’s, you’d understand. The G-force/pressure caused by the rapid change of speed (120mph, to 20mph), just, hurt.

It’s silent. I am head to toe of adrenaline. Buzzing!! At this point, you begin to appreciate the height you’re at. Although when you’re in freefall, you fall at a rapid rate, you can’t really ‘take it all in’. I could have a conversation with instructor (who was tiny! (Bearing in mind I’m a good 6”1’)) as you and I could in the car, or in a pub.. It was silent. There was very little wind, no cloud covering, and just, fantastic views. The parachute was deployed at 5,000ft; the down time from here took approx 5 minutes.

200/300ft up, my family and friends were now recognisable. “OI OI!!!!!!!” as I come swooping in over their heads to land. “And one, two, three and STAND!” *wobble!!!!* My legs were like jelly; our landing was effortless, god that was amazing.

Sure enough, who was the first person to greet me on our landing? Yep, the Camera Hippy Man. (I shall call you, Edwardo!) 101 things race through your mind, you’re alive, that was amazing, and I can breath! I want to do that again!! Off comes the silly hat, a few moments to find my legs and I go to greet Will who had landed some 2 minutes before me. Edwardo catches me, a few words to the camera and a little dance, and I’m outta here.

It really was a ‘speechless’ experience... “JIM how was it?” “.....Yeah, good?!” There really is no other feeling like that in the world. DO IT.

The afternoon was then spent drinking beer, playing American Football and reminiscing on the mornings’ activities.

Those that sponsored me, I thank you greatly. It wouldn’t have been possible without you. The money was totalled (at £310) and sent in to the NCH Children’s Charity. (http://www.nch.org.uk/) The jump was well overdue, but totally worth it in the end. Thank you for your patience for, A - the jump, B - the video/pictures and C - my thanks.

I’d certainly take part in a jump again, now I know to ‘breeeeaath’ next time, all should be well!

Thanks again. Hope you’re well, see you soon.

Jim
       

I'm unsure how many people actually pay a visit to this area of BitAThat these days.. personally, I'd like to see it take off again. Just waiting for our Gallery to be moved and fingers crossed, things will become more lively.

Anywho..



As a lot of you will be aware already, I am doing a SkyDive on the 1st March (day before my 21st..) for the Childrens Charity. I am trying to raise sponsorship money for the event, my tarket is £395 - I am some £120 short.

If you would like to help and sponsor me, PLEASE pay a visit to the Justgiving website that has been created, especially for my jump - http://www.justgiving.com/jimwhite

It is easy. It is safe. It is fast. Electronic sponsorship is the future, it cuts out the middle man (me), and allows me to fully focus towards the jump without having to worry about collecting the money! (I'm so, so very scared!!)

I will have several spectators on the day, hopefully they'll be able to snap a few shots of (possibly..) my last few steps on solid ground. Quite why I am doing this, I do not know. Urgh

So yes. Sponsor money is more than welcome, every little helps. It would be seriously appreciated.

Check back in a weeks time for a detailed report and photos from the big day.

Thank you, Jim.
       

Jim Says:

Father and I have hit the Peak District a fair few times now. Last time we set off approx [3:30am, around this time of year 2006. We timed it perfectly, to make it to the top for sun-rise. The views were awesome..



^click the above image for the full set from my first morning venture out there..

I wanted to do this again, it was fun. You may ask yourself, "'fun'? Really?" Yeah, really. "let me know when we're having fun, I'd hate to miss it!!"

Reis and I were well up for the challenge.. checked the Met Office weather and all seemed well, should be in for a nice morning. I was up at 3:20, showered, 2 x coffee and went to wake Reis at 3:40am. "urgh!!" We set off around 4:10am, bound for Castleton, Hope Valley (approx hour and half drive.) I forget how long it took it, but as you can imagine it was a clear run, bugger all on the roads at that time other than milk-floats and freight lorries.

On arrival is was close too 5:50am.. we geared up, took some 'proof' photos to prove that yes, it was THAT early, and found our way through to the route I took last time.



haha, you're too tall Reis; sorry.


25 minutes in, we take our first break and I pull out the D-SLR. It's got light soo soon!




A bit of team-pointing...



a slurp of the coffee from our flask (piping hot mate, piping..) and we were off.

Finally finding the right route up, we get rid of the head-torches (it got light, fast..) and buggered on in. Bit of a scramble on the way up, walking up stream against rocks, roots, sheep.. the usual.

Next stop we were on the ridge.. Turning right would take us to Hollins Cross:



(very distinctive land-mark due to the single standing tree) and turning left would point us towards Mam-tor. (Highest point in the Peak's (I think..) standing in at a mere 455ft.



That'a way!!!




Okay, it's getting cold... it's very windy and I'm piss wet through! yet it's not raining? The fog/mist was blowing at 90° to us, pummelling us with wet 'moist' air. hmmmm.. Moist.
We were getting drenched.




Taking 5 minutes to refuel and admire the view..




Right..




20 minutes along the same ridge, and we made it to the Mam-tor trig point. Now we really are quite wet..




Making our way down, we come across a road, whoa.. life form! It was a bit weird, it seemed, out of place? We actually later found ourselves on the same road on the way back, some wicked twisties out there to have a play on; just a shame about the 200ft drop either side!

We're walking, and walking.. in the general direction of Castleton. Looking forward to a nice warm cuppa tea and a change of clothes. We don't seem to be getting anywhere..




Infact, we'd come down the wrong side of Mam-Tor. DOH! After walking for half hour hoping to see Castleton in the faint distance we end up around the same height as we previously were on Mam-tor.. hmm..




Best.Map.Reading.Skills.Ever!


We realised where we went wrong, turned back and found our own way up to the path we were on around 2 hours ago.. What we didn't realise was we'd taken the path of a landslide that happened around 7 years ago.. hmm.. Okay




This was going to be a tough one..

Now.. if we'd of seen what had lied ahead... I really don’t think we'd of taken a second look.. Quite how we (reis.. :P) managed it, I'll never know. Walking towards the bottom of the cliff, it was alright.. quite a steady gradient.. Moving in closer (bearing in mind visibility was minimal), to the right was a sheer cliff face.. "right, okay.. lets shimmy to the left a bit.." This wasn't much better. A valley had formed, probably something to do with the landslide. I took the lead, jabbing my pole in as I went.. "How's it looking Jim?", "all day mate, all day!! easy!" It turned that you had to take two-hands of grass in your hold before you dare move your footing. It was crazy.. Basically crawling up the hillside. "Hey Reis, turn around! Look down there!", "fuck off man..!". It was just a white ocean of, nothing.. Mam-tor stands at 455ft.. we must have climbed a good 200.. I enjoyed it, it was good fun. Each and every step Reis made though, I had to counter it just incase he lost his footing and slipped (he wore trainers, noob..).







You had to be there to appreciate it. Trust.

From here, a steady walk back to the first trig-point and made our way back down the way we came.. good stuff. Each and every step was "Squelch!", I felt rotten.

heh, 10 minutes away from 'civilisation', we met Sniper-cow.



He was fun.


"Watch it mate, it looks a bit slippy here." "Yep..."



Reis fell over. Hilarious. :D So close to home too.. tosser.


At this point its close to 10am (I think..) all the couples and oldies are just gearing up and setting out to take the same path we did 4 hours ago. Each person we walked by kinda of, nodded "morning.." and gave us a head-to-toe.. thinking "what the bloody hell!". Yeah, you know.

Back to Newark for a Full English, a warm change of clothes, shower and to rest my head at 2pm. Zzzzz..... I wake at 7:20. Arse. I hate sleeping day-time.. it leaves you so confused when you wake.

Spent the night playing around with the new ISP settings, we're now on with TalkTalk and connected through a 2Mb line. :)

I quite enjoyed it, and Reis certainly had fun. Shame about the photos... I didn't want to risk using the D-SLR too much due to the amount of water in the air.. the majority of the photos were taken on my mobile.

For the full set, see here - BitAThat Gallery - General

Thanks for reading.
       

The following was initially intended for Forum purposes only, however it should I guess be posted here, too. If I were to have wrote in here from the start, it might be a bit more 'BitAThat'. Just bear in mind, Forum... not blog. Forum. Forum. Forum!

I could get used to this working, travelling, meeting people malarkey.

Wednesday 9am, I set off to East Mids. Pick up some Euro's, sort the car-parking, grab a latte and a bite to eat and hop on board the 737-800.

Arrive at Dublin shortly after 1pm. Met by a lovely fella named Terry (no homo.) He was as Irish as you can get. I struggled to work out what he was saying sometimes. We got onto the subject of cars (after the usual, "you been busy today?" taxi-man conversations..) and he kept asking about my "Audio tree!". What the fucks one of them? Audi A3, ahh got you! Long story short... 'gizz your accent. #

I was dropped straight at Trim Castle Hotel, which is where I stayed. First impressions were 'wow!'. This place was lush. This will do nicely, Thank you very much :D.

I hadn't a clue as to when/who/where I was meeting 'the team'. Oh well. I unloaded my gear in My Room, which again was pretty snazzy! Loaded the D-SLR and went exploring. The first obvious point-of-call was the the Castle. It was used for backing shots in BraveHeart (1995..), so I believe. Never the less, an impressive area.







(full series of castle-grounds shots to be seen on the BitAThat Gallery. Link yourself, bitch.)

I'd walked around here long enough; I made a move into the Town centre. Tootled down the high street and found a nice cafe to sit and have a bite to eat in. The waitress had just spent 5 months in Manchester, quite why I do not know. Nice enough lass though, butterface.

I made it back to base, took a look through the pictures, loaded up the laptop, streamed some music and fell asleep. Score. I woke around 6pm, had a look round the hotel and found one of the Manufacturer Reps I was going to be working with. Deal was dinner was at 8, okay. Showered, clothed, Guinness and Steak. YEAH! The others on the course were funny. 1 German lady (hairy..), 2 Swedish girls (Yes nice!), 1 Irish and a Dutch guy. There were some funny silences around the table as you can imagine. We English people are lazy. Lazy not to have bothered to learn languages like others do. The Dutch guy had conversations with the hairy woman in German, switched to Swedish and then talked fluent English to me and another chap. Some boy. The night was over for close to 11pm. Training tomorrow!

Wake 6:20am. Open curtains to check the view and..



Very nice. I proceeded to stand bollock-naked in the cold window taking dozens of photos of the Castle. The low lying mist added to the affect nicely. Shower. Breakfast. Gear-up and a days worth of training. (starting to take a fancy for one of the Sweed's at this point.. ;))

Thursday night the training was over, everyone left! I had only participated in one days training. It started Monday, and went through to Thurdsay. Everyone bar the Dutch guy left, should I say. M.Roos: "so do you want to hook up tonight"? J.White: " :? ... yeah, sure. that would be great!" Met in the bar for 5:30pm. Guinness. Walk into town. Found a fancy restaurant, Heineken, €28 fillet steak, hot waitress and a walk back to Trim Castle. More beer in the bar, he left at 9:40pm, I stayed for a Baileys and pretended to read the paper ;). I had a good night.

Friday I caught an early cab into Dublin after breakfast, 8:30am. Bearing in mind I have my camera shoulder-bag, laptop briefcase and suitcase to lug around, I was going to struggle. I found myself on the main-stretch.. lots some smart shops, reminded me of Amsterdam tbh. Brought some new jeans, they're okay... Sat my sorry ass down in a big park, and listened to some music to kill the time. Taxi back to the airport, one cheeky final Guinness, and I was boarding the plane for 2.20pm. Home in Newark for 6. Yeah :D


Quite why I just wrote that, I'm not sure. A few details to be added in at a later date maybe. So in all, I enjoyed the trip. It was nice to be independent as to how, when and why you do things. The plane transfers etc are a doddle.

As i said, the full set of pictures can be seen in the GALLERY.

Thanks for reading.
Jim
       

So it's already been a good Friday.

I've been paid. The morning is going quick. I've done a little bit of online clothes shopping. I'm going into town to get Guitar Hero 2 at lunch.

The day can't get much better, right?

WRONG.

I got a text from the girlfriend at 11:27am saying "Hey you, got you a lil prezie ;-) x." Now, I'm male so obviously my mind instantly turns to sex, and dirty thoughts race around inside my brain. "Awesome" I say to myself. I text her asking what it was. She wouldn't tell me. An hour rolls by and I'm still curious as to what this "lil prezie" could be, she tells me she'll meet me in town for lunch. She's going to give me the present in town. This is hot.

I get to town, a little nervous but overall excited at what possibly awaits me. I park up my bike and spot her...she's wearing normal clothes, nothing naughty, my eyes scan over her...she has a handbag! Maybe it's in there! She approaches me says "Hi" and we walk & talk for a minute and go into the bank to get some money out. She hasn't mentioned the present yet, is that a good thing? Maybe she's taking me somewhere? Maybe I'm not getting it until later? I don't ask about it for fear that I may not receive it. I think she must sense this somehow and another minute rolls by and we're walking along and she reaches into her bag and says "here you go" and hands me a small object, I look down and flip it over and can't quite believe my eyes.

This is what she got me.

I think at that moment in time I should have got down on one knee right there and then and said "Marry me" but I didn't, instead a huge smile appeared on my face, I laughed and proclaimed "AWESOME!" and we carried on with our lunch.

See? My girlfriend is better than yours.

       

Long review ahead, followed by nice bullet points for those of you who can’t be bothered to read the whole thing. If you want the brief of it then just look for the first bullet point.



So over the last few weeks it’s been happening again.



My mp3 player has been acting up.

It started out as random crashes whilst I was trying to transfer music to it which would cause a firmware problem that could only be solved by formatting the whole thing and re-loading the firmware. Needless to say that after a few goes of this I was a bit annoyed but kept on ploughing through.

After that came the skipping of tracks. Once you’d put past a certain amount of data on the thing it would randomly skip bits of the track and even interlace the previous/current track for about 2 seconds and if you tried to do a repair or to re-build the library/solve the problem you’d get the firmware problem which caused the whole thing to have to start again.

I’m not pissed off, quite the contrary, I’ve had the device for over 3 years now and it has sustained several drops, being thrown into bags and general damage every day and it was still performing; but it was obvious that it was on its way out. So I decided to get a new one.





A Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB.



I didn’t really want an iPod as I don’t like the interfaces on them and my Creative has been rock solid throughout the years and very easy to use. So I once again went Creative.

First impressions?

It looks awesome!

I took it out the box on Saturday morning at 9am and instantly thought it looked great and then I tried turning it on and nothing happened. I thought “maybe I’m pressing the wrong button” so I gave the instruction manual a quick look over and saw that you had to “charge your mp3 player for at least 5 hours before first use” and “your mp3 player might not turn on until 1 hour into the first charge". I thought this was a little poo as the first thing you want to do when you get a new gadget is to turn it on and go “ooooh!” not wait for another hour for it to charge.

Regardless of this set back, I looked at the other things that came with it: a USB cable, a pair of headphones and a carry case. That was it. I thought they had made a mistake, where was my charger? Oh, it turns out it charges from USB and if you want to have a wall charger (which charges it in 2 hours, not 5 like the USB) then you have to pay extra. A bit cheap I thought but it was kind of cool that I could charge it up via a normal USB cable! I could charge it with any cable at work! Except that you can’t since you’ll need the proprietary connector that goes onto the bottom of the mp3 player to connect your USB cable. Again, another little annoyance but I can live with it. I’ll just put it on charge at my desk to charge when I get home from work instead of in the drawer powered off.

Time to install the software!

So I’ve got my mp3 player, I want to charge it so I follow the instructions and install the software, it’s 9:30am on a Saturday so I just click “yes” to a lot of stuff but then I notice it trying to install it’s own player and associate every media file with it…no thanks, but bonus points for trying though! So I’ve got the software installed and I go for a shower, plug mp3 player in and head out into town for a few hours whilst it charges. I came back later on to find it wasn’t charging properly since I’d not let the “new device found” driver install! Whoops! My bad, not Creative’s fault. Another 40 minutes later I finally get to turn it on and the “oooooooh!” moment hits. It looks amazing turned on, really bright and waiting for me to have a play. So I did.

The navigation took a while to get used to.

I hadn’t really looked at how to use it (it was 9am on a Saturday, folks) and I figured I could “pick it up along the way” and I eventually did. After 40 minutes of use I understood the difference between a light and heavy click on the scroll pad, how to program the “special” button and how to use it, how to edit system information and other neat things. After using it for a few days now I can say it’s become second nature to navigate round this thing and it really is amazingly easy. If I’m listening to a track I really like or hate then I simply lightly tap the scroll pad, it comes up with the star rating, I rate it and then lightly tap again to go back to the song now playing. Simple, yet great to use as I think (like Windows Media Player) the “shuffle” mode on it weighs up which tracks you’ll like to hear based on these ratings.

There’s also a few other great features such as the DJ mode which allows things such as “Album of the day” “Random Play All” “Rarely heard” “Most Popular” “Highly Rated” “Yet to be rated”. Personally I LOVE Album Of The Day as I am so indecisive on what to listen to and have loads of albums I never really listen to.

They also added the nice “click” sound when you scroll with the touch pad, you can turn it off but it adds a lot more to the user feedback. It may annoy people around you though as it comes out of the mp3 player and not through the headphones!

Onto the most important thing, transferring mp3’s!

Back when I got my Creative Nomad Zen NX the software was HORRIBLE for transferring stuff with. It didn’t do half the things that you’d want to be able to do (like create play lists on your computer and do advanced tag editing) so I purchased Redchair Notmad Explorer and all was good. The first thing I obviously did was to go to their website and was disappointed they haven’t created one for the Vision:M so I loaded up the creative sync software and my first impressions were that I was fairly impressed! It could do a lot of what I wanted it to but there is also a lot that it can’t do which I’m used to now, such as mass tag editing of fields in the ID3V2 tags. Then I noticed that my songs weren’t displaying the album art whilst playing and it had added all the pictures (plus other random data) to the mp3 player as well when I synced it. Now I know this isn’t Creative’s fault as I hadn’t tagged all my files correctly but it would have been nice to be able to do this on mass AFTER I’d transferred them to my mp3 player. I wiped everything from my mp3 player and started again.

I used Tag&Rename to mass edit the tags, then I used a freeware program to get all the album art and input it into the ID3V2 tags. Once that was all done I had to put the music back onto my mp3 player so I loaded up Windows Media Player 11 and used the simple “sync” interface on there to put everything on and it worked an absolute charm. No more pictures of album art in the pictures folder, just on the tracks themselves, no more random data transferred and all the folders are labelled correctly when I browse my mp3 player! Awesome. I’ve still managed to mess up a few tags here and there but I’ll easily edit that tonight. If only Windows Media Player 11 allowed you to edit them on your mp3 player itself, but alas – I suppose you can’t have everything!

I’m also pretty pedantic about my tagging, a lot of the stuff you can get “auto filled” by windows media player will give it a really random genre such as “Folk Blues” for Damien Rice and you end up with about 50 genres for 10 albums that could have been labelled “Pop”. A minor annoyance but now I’ve labelled all my stuff properly I’ll just check it in the near future before transferring.



Anyway, there’s the long bit of the review and as promised (and to add to it), here’s a list of bullet points of what I like and don’t like.

• It looks gorgeous. I got the black model which shows up finger prints (and probably scratches) but the screen looks amazing when on. I’ve shown it to women and they’ve gone “ooooh! Pretty!” so I guarantee it will get you laid!*

• You can use up to 16GB of the player as a flash drive! Very handy! I’ve assigned 4GB of mine to use as a flash drive. Yet to test it though.

• Proprietary connections SUCK. Really. Let me just use my normal USB cable. Then I can use it at a friend’s computer without having to carry the connector and show him how lovely it is and you will get more sales!

• The navigation and scroll pad is great. After the initial “wtf?” phase of navigating around you’ll love it and find it easy to use.

• It doesn’t feel huge in your pocket; it’s about the same size as a 5G iPod. Maybe a bit smaller?

• Great “click” sound on the touch pad. Gives a real tactile feel to it. I like.

• Sound quality is awesome! My mp3’s sound wonderful and it goes real loud! (you can limit this if you don’t want people listening to it too loud)

• Get rid of the rubbish headphones that come with it. Buy some Sennheiser PX200’s for travel usage. Never look back.

• The battery life seems solid. About 10 hours or constant use after first charge and still had a quarter of it left.

• Charge the damn thing before you pack it! I want to play with it instantly!

• Where was the wall charger? C’mon guys. Make us pay £3 more for it, but don’t insult us by having to “purchase it separately”. That reeks of cheap.

• The sync software is nice…if you’ve tagged everything correctly. If not then look at 3rd party options if you’re a bit OCD about making it all appear correctly. Windows Media Player 11 is great for synching stuff to it.

• The alarm clock only lets you play “a random song” or “FM Radio”. Why not let me play “Selected music” like my old Creative did? Or just to play more than one random song?

• If you transfer a video to it that isn’t in the correct format it will encode it for you if you use the software provided. I like that, thanks!

• Videos look absolutely superb on it. Really impressed.

• It has a radio if you get bored of your mp3’s. It seems nice, not used it a lot yet!

• Can display albums by album art, cool feature and album art looks great next to mp3’s you’re playing, just remember to tag it correctly!

• DJ feature on it is fantastic. “Album of the Day” is great for picking a random album, I definitely spend less time looking at my mp3 player and being indecisive because of this.

• Rating tracks is easy and addictive. Nice feature.

• Thanks for the supplied carry case, saves on the scratches when I put it in my bag.

• The software that comes with it has great potential. Please let us do advanced tagging stuff AFTER we’ve put the music onto our mp3 player. Please?

• You can hide your videos (read: porn) and password protect them on the mp3 player. Nice touch which allows you to carry videos of you barrelling your girlfriend in that donkey mask with piece of mind.

• Future models could include Wi-Fi / Bluetooth which would be awesome for transferring stuff to and from mobile phones. A guy can dream, right?

• You can sync it with your Outlook to organise yourself. Not used this feature and doubt I will but it’s a nice touch, once again.

• It plays DRM Music like the stuff you buy from Napster or Windows Plays For Sure. Nice features for acquiring mp3’s legally!

• You can buy an extra cable and play videos through it to your tv. Again, it would be nice if this was included.

• I've been told if you plug it into your Xbox 360 it will recognise it and let you play music from it into your games. Not verified this but if it's true then that's rather awesome!

• When you've maxed out charging the battery turns itself off and stops charging. So it saves on overcharging the thing. A little detail but it will make the battery last longer.

• If you plug in some headphones whilst the player is turned off it'll turn itself on.



So there’s my review of the product after 3 days of use, I’m sure there’s lots I’ve left out but I honestly can’t remember it all at the moment. I really like it and would recommend it to anyone looking for a 30GB mp3 player. Tesco was doing an offer on it for £99 but it’s out of stock. I got it from Amazon for £140 which is about the second best price out there.

If you want to see the thing in action then just head over to YouTube and check out some of the reviews. They’re all pretty positive as it really is a great device.

I'd recommend that as soon as you get the player, and have charged it, that you head on over to the Support section on Creative's website and download the latest firmware and software updates.

I just hope it lasts as long as my old Creative mp3 player and can take as much of a battering over the years.


* This is not a guarantee! You’ll still be ugly as sin!






Edit: After playing with it some more last night I've got to say that Windows Media Player 11 is really good for managing the mp3 player. I was editing some tags In the library (on my computer, you can't edit the tags after they've been transferred with WMP11) and I noticed that it had taken my ratings from the mp3 player and added them to my computer! I hadn't asked it to but it was a really cool feature as it means that it synchs it every time I plug it in.

I've not really touched the Creative supplied software and don't really have a reason to now, except maybe for video re-encoding. Windows Media Player 11 is great for editing the tags before synching and once you've got over the initial ball ache of editing those hundreds of albums you've got (it will take quite a few hours, trust me) it goes smooth. I just wish they'd let me edit the tags with Media Player after it's on the mp3 player.