e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

[Tinroad]

The 6GB Nomad Jukebox currently accounts for more than 50 percent of Creative's music player sales. Our primary gripe is that the Jukebox is about the same size as the portable CD player that we've been trying to leave behind--not to mention heavier.

But the company has plans to address that, and by September it will have two new Jukebox products on the market. The first, which Creative is currently referring to as the ever-catchy Prototype 1 (which sadly, is a better name than that of many products on the market), is the snazzier-looking of the two. This totally new design, which is about the same shape and size as one of those Dictaphone voice recorders (about six inches tall and three inches wide), will offer about 6-10GB of storage and should cost around $299--the same price as the Intel Pocket Concert Audio Player, which offers 128MB of flash-based memory. While it's a huge size reduction from the current Nomad Jukebox, it's still larger, and likely heavier, than many other players on the market.

The second unit (yup, you guessed it, Prototype 2) looks like the current Nomad Jukebox, though shrunk down by 30 percent. But while the smaller size is certainly a welcome improvement, the bigger story is what's going inside the player. First off, Jukebox junior will hold between 10GB and 20GB of music. Creative is also considering equipping the new device with an IEEE 1394 (Firewire) connection, which would significantly speed up music transfer--assuming your PC supports it. Company officials are guessing that this unit will cost somewhere between $399 and $449.

http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2706738,00.html