A few months ago, I wrote about why I recommend the Creative Zen Nano+ and I still love it, but I wanted to provide a quick update. As I said in that original post, I had put the Nano+ through the washer and the dryer yet it still worked. What I didn't know until a few weeks later was that the player is only recognizing 250 MB of the 1 GB storage.

The reason it took me a few weeks to figure this out is because when I connect to my PC and sync via Windows Media player or drag-n-drop through explorer the Nano+ accepts 1 GB worth of music. The problem is when I'm playing my MP3s it only sees ~250 MB worth. The other songs don't even show up in the menu as available. I realized the problem when I was at the gym and my song rotation went back to the first song in my playlist much sooner than it should have. I started futzing around with things and discovered a bunch of songs I had copied weren't showing up. Later I connected to my PC, browsed to the Nano+ and verified that all of the songs were there, but only 1/4^th of them were showing on the Nano's screen. Hrm.

I called Creative's support line and they were very polite and helpful, but the only suggestion they had [after I disclosed having run the thing through the laundry] was to update the firmware. Unfortunately, that didn't resolve the issue and now I have a 250 MB Nano+ instead of a 1 GB. It sucks, but honestly I'm still impressed that the thing works as well as it does given the circumstances. Besides, I'm seriously thinking about buying one of those Zune thing-a-ma-bobs in a month.

~tod

tags: nano creative+zen zune