Creative have been behind a little laterly. The ZEN looks on paper to be a great device, but many people have had little issues with the player, plus it doesn’t feature any nextgen features (Bluetooth, WiFi, touchscreen). That is hopefully where the Zen Share comes in, which is supposedly Creative’s answer to the Samsung P2 and iPod Touch.
The rumour goes that the Zen Share will be Solid State (flash drive, not hard drive), have WiFi (which will be magically different to the Zune and iPod), feature X-Fi audio and will have a touchscreen.
To me it sounds like an iPod Touch with better sound hardware, and I’m fine with that. If Creative are going to make a device similar to the Touch, but release us from iTunes, I would be interested. Better support for a larger range of video codecs and competitive price, and Creative will have a winner.

For more rumours, click over to epiZENter.

Creative have been super creative (isn’t that ironic) with their new naming convention for what it seems to be a new line of portable entertainment. It is simply Zen Share, is suppose to be a new wireless player or some sort. Message to Creative, Apple have different names for devices to make it easier for the consumer, try not to make 20 different types of Zen’s. Expect an update in March.

For more info, click over to AnythingButiPod.

If you didn’t hear, Apple have done the memory upgrade on the Touch and iPhone, making the already delicious devices more so. Remembering that Creative and a slew of other portable audio manufactures had already released their 32GB players, it makes sense that prices drops are bound to happen. The first device to feel the heat of Apples upgrades is the highly regarded Creative Zen 32GB PMP. The original price was $US329, and has now dropped down to $US299. Do they accept checks?

For more info, click over to Crave.

Creative Stone Plus has just grown (don’t stones usually shrink). Not in physical size, but in storage size. It is now shipping in a 4GB size, and at a very attractive price of $US89.99. Perfect timing for that last minute Christmas gift .

The Creative ZEN is so close to being perfect, expect for a few quibbles (such as SD card slot usefulness), but it has now become a step closer to perfection. It has recently received a firmware update that fixes and adds a bunch of things like Thai language support, improves startup speed, ensures the alarm is working even if your player is turned off, improves the power adapter charging process and improves video playback performance. The firmware update is titled 1.10.05 is available now and definitely recommended to anyone with a ZEN.

For more info, click over to the epiZENter Website.

I’m a big fan of the way Creative have gone their new ZEN player. It is still one of the only 16GB players with a expandable slot, and a good one at that (SD, not those silly minimicronano cards). The guys over at Generation MP3 have done a lengthy review on the little guy and had some good things to say. They liked overall quality, ergonomics, usability and price, but disliked small hiss at low volumes, videos must be encoded and battery life not as long as advertised among other things. The review is in french but the guys over a epiZENter have got a nice translation linked up for us English speaking types.

For more info, click over to the epiZENter Website (for English translation), or GenerationMP3 for french.

Not the spiritual Zen (thats already free young padawan), but the Creative Zen has had a price drop already (considering it hasn’t been around that long yet). Prices are now $US130 for 4GB (down $20) and $US250 for 16GB (down $50). The 8GB is yet to budge on price, still being at $US200.

For more info, click over to the Anything But iPod Site.