The MP3 Player is Dead, Long Live the MP3 Player

Well, I killed my Creative Zen Touch this weekend. I dropped it on Friday night while giving out Halloween candy, but didn’t think anything of it since it still turned on fine after I dropped it. Well, this weekend I loaded some music onto it (which had no issues) and when I went to actually PLAY the music, I found the front screen doesn’t work. The side buttons (power and volume control) work fine, as do the top buttons (the lock and USB port). But try to hit “play” and nothing happens. And nothing happens when I try to access the menus either.

Since the thing is almost three years old and completely out of warranty, and since I also have all 6,771 songs saved to my hard drive as a backup, I opted to take matters into my own hands and pop the machine open and see if something just came loose when I dropped it. No luck – the hard drive is solid and there’s nothing loose. It’s just BROKEN.

So now I have 6,771 songs (along with some podcasts) that I can’t listen to anymore. And since those things cost a pretty penny, it looks like I won’t be listening to anything good in my car for the next 6-7 months. THAT is gonna suck on the drive up to NoVA in a few weeks on our way to NYC.

When I do finally have the money to replace her, I’ll be getting another Creative product – I’m a fan and if I hadn’t dropped her she’d still be working perfectly. I have only myself to blame. So after the holidays, once I have the money saved up for our beach trip in May, I’ll begin saving up for a new Creative MP3 player – it has to be 60GB since that’s what I have now. A 30GB will hold all the music I have on there right now. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll come out with a 80GB by the time I’m ready to buy a new unit.