Creative Zen Vision W

[Craptacular]

Anyone have one of these? Despite what I posted in the "tax return" thread, I'm likely going to buy this or something comparable. The W seems almost too perfect for what I need. My priorities are downloading and storing photos (backup for trips when I don't want to bring a laptop, as well as sharing photos with family, etc), using it as a portable HD (in place of buying a large flash drive), listening to music / radio, having it sync to my Outlook calendar, and eventually getting into the whole video thing. I have a Nikon D70, which uses Compact Flash, so having a CF slot built right into the W is fantastic. I also currently use Windows Media Player at home and work for listening to music, so it would be nice to simply transfer that stuff over to a W. I'm not one who needs something that's easy to jog or ride a bike with ... this will be used while driving, sitting at my desk at work, or hiking around with my backpack on vacation.

I'm also considering the M, which I know some people on here like, but since the W has a bigger screen, built-in CF slot, and includes the power adapter and video cable (you have to purchase these separately with the M), I'm willing to shell out the extra dough for the W. Any thoughts?

[hukarez]

I bought my friend a Creative Vision M. I think I've seen those W models about, but I haven't heard much about them to be honest. Also, I remember going over an earlier thread about the Creative devices sometime this past December, when I was doing X-Mas shopping..

There was a mention of the Creative Vision devices in the Zune thread by stevew:

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=54063&highlight=Creative+Vision

[DaddyTorgo]

yeah. I started a thread where we talked a bunch about the M's. I got an M...love it. If the W includes that extra stuff though and has the CF slot built in that you'll need...no reason not to shell out for it.

I've exclusively had Creative MP3 players since the very first flash-based ones came out way back when, and I've always enjoyed their design/firmware/whatever more than Apple.

[Craptacular]

I went ahead and bought a W on Amazon today. For those of you used to WMA on these devices, what bitrate do you rip your CDs at? I've used 192 kbps for the limited number of songs I've ripped onto my work computer for use with WMP, but never really tried to compare 128 to 192. I know iTunes defaults to 128, and I've heard AAC and WMA have similar quality at similar bitrates. Should I bother using 192, or is 128 good enough? For the most part, I envision using the W with cheapish headphones, although I will likely hook it up to a stereo every once in a while.