Pop Goes the Faceplate
I really love my portable MP3 player — a Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra (say that five times fast). It’s got a 40 meg hard drive, a screen that’s easy to read and well lit, and all the buttons and features you would expect on your average MP3 player. It’s physically larger than many of the newer models out there like the iPod Nano or the Creative Zen Stone, but at around the size of a deck of cards it still fits in my pocket easily. Using Notmad Explorer I can drop and drag files to and from the player with ease. In fact, I like everything about the unit except one teeny, tiny little detail.

On the bottom of the MP3 player is a sliding switch that pops off the front face plate. And by “pops off” I mean a spring-loaded mechanism forcibly shoots the faceplate off. There is no way to lock the faceplace or switch into place. Not only is the switch in the worst possible location (the bottom of the unit) but it sticks just enough that it catches on everything. Almost every single time I pull the player out of my front pocket the front is missing. The few times it hasn’t detached while in my pocket, the level catches when I’m removing it from my pocket, shooting the face place across the room.

The only reason a person would ever need to remove the faceplate is to replace the unit’s battery — which is a rechargable lithium ion battery pack, so chances are you will in fact never need to replace it. My guess is the battery will long outlast the hard drive and whatever other electronics are stuffed inside there. Changing out a rechargable battery happens so infrequently that I’m not sure why Creative felt owners needed such a quick and easy way to do so — every one of my kid’s toys has a phillips screw holding in their batteries. Over the past year or two I’ve hit the switch 500 times on accident, and never meant to actually hit it a single time. This switch would be like a button on your car’s arm rest that popped the hood open while you were driving. Who needs that feature?!?!

The front of my MP3 player is now scratched up because more than once I’ve pulled it out of my front pocket only to have the faceplace pop off and go shooting (and then sliding) across the floor. I have been tempted to (and may still) place a piece of duck tape across the bottom of the unit, holding the faceplate in place. I’ve thought about hot-gluing the damn thing on but I’m sure the minute I did that the battery would somehow die.

Yet another example of, “I’m sure this looked good on a CAD program but did anyone actually test this design?”