Conquering the Wild MP3 Player

My wife and I thought it would be a fine idea to get each other MP3 players for our wedding anniversary a while back. It was about time to move on from CDs to the next level of technology. Turned out to be a lot harder than it sounded, though.

We carefully chose a Creative Zen model after considering several options and decided it would make things easiest to get the same thing for both of us. I first ran into trouble when I tried to install the software that came with it. Turns out that the software was only compatible with one specific variation on Windows XP, which happened to be one that we didn't have. None of the advertising happened to mention this (all ads said only that it worked with Windows XP, period). We went back to all sources to double check after the fact to make sure we hadn't missed something. That information isn't even in the packaging that came with the software and player! Creative's own web site mentioned it exactly once, but that's the only place we could find other than their tech support people that says anything about it. The other annoying thing about the player itself was that it came with a bunch of crap already on it. There was music and a couple of audio books that I didn't want, which were presumably on the player to draw people to other businesses, which I will now be actively avoiding.

We found out that we could use Windows Media Player instead of Creative's software, and in fact a lot of people preferred that to the packaged software anyway, so we could still use the players. I started the lengthy process of converting all of our CDs to MP3 format. Having accomplished that mission (approximately 1900 songs), I started working with WMP and the MP3 player to try to get all of the music on the players themselves.

I've got to confess here that at this point, the problem becomes my fault. I made several mistakes in the process due to my partial lack of familiarity with WMP and complete lack of familiarity with MP3 players in general. I'll spare you most of the gory details, but the key mistake was relying on the automated syncing process that I thought would be a good idea because, hey, it's automated and I can't mess it up. I ended up with quite the opposite result, since it did several things that I had to un-do later, once I'd figure out how things actually worked.

I'm glad to report that I finally achieved victory today and should be okay from here. I hadn't been aware in advance that this would be difficult at all. Technology is so much fun when it works, and such a bear when it doesn't. And now to venture into the world of downloading music. Here's hoping that goes more smoothly.