Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Creative let loose with a teaser a short while back for something called Zii. This is supposed to “change everything” and provide something called “stemcell computing.” Zii has the prospect of being quite exciting for Creative, but based on these reportedly leaked screenshots, it could just be more of the same. The rumor mill is saying that what you see here is the user interface on the new Creative ZEN Zii. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t look all that revolutionary to me. Yes, it’s reasonably attractive and it’ll probably come with decent eye candy for animations, but isn’t this more of what we’ve already seen? You just sift through a list for music, video, podcasts, and so on."

I call bull on this one. Sounds to me like a marketing team gone awry. Zii seems to be capitalizing on Wii and "Stemcell Computing" seems like they are just using inflammatory words to get attention. Creative, you've got my attention, but I'm doubtful you've got anything up your sleeve to impress me. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

"Creative Technology Ltd., a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products, today introduced the Creative ZEN® Mozaic portable media player for music, photos and video. Inspired by the artistic expressions of mosaic art, the Creative ZEN Mozaic, available in vivid pink, chic black or cool silver colour, is a bold design statement that reflects the user's sense of fashion and individual style. Attractively priced at S$99.00 for a 2GB model (for up to 1,000 songs*) and S$129.00 for a 4GB model (for up to 2,000 songs*), the Creative ZEN Mozaic lets users flaunt their style, while grooving to their favourite tunes, or enjoying their photos and music videos anytime, anywhere. The Creative ZEN Mozaic comes complete with an impressive built-in speaker, vibrant 1.8-inch LCD colour screen, FM radio and voice recorder. Weighing just 43g and measuring 79.5mm x 40mm x 12.8mm, the super compact Creative ZEN Mozaic provides up to 32 hours of audio playback with a single charge of the battery. Also available at a later date are 8GB and 16GB models."

I'm not sure what I think of the design. I'm betting reactions will be polarized between love it and hate it. I really like the built in speaker, but think that the memory sizes are a bit small. When I looked at the pictures before reading the press release, I thought Creative was actually releasing a phone as the placement of the buttons made me think instantly of a keypad. If your interested in seeing beyond the press release, check out the World Exclusive First Look.