Well, it took all of four months - maybe four and a half - and the hard drive on my Nomad Zen Xtra 40GB Jukebox or whatever the fuck it's called has crapped out. Well, to be honest I probably fucked it by jogging with it.

Anyway, I spent a little time looking on user forums last night and sure enough it seems to be a common problem, to which there is one solution - replace the HDD... But that's a DIY, wave-goodbye-to-the-warranty kind of solution. My warranty is history anyway, since I bought in the USA (via Amazon, shipped to a friend in NYC, who shipped it to me). The good news is, it seems that sometimes the HDD will still work in a laptop, even if the Nomad thinks it's fucked. So maybe I'll be able to salvage the drive and have an extra 40GB drive in my laptop. I'll need a geek to help me with that, methinks. And i don't wanna void the warranty on my laptop...

Nomads are cheap, and the battery and HDD are replacable, which is great (c.f. i-pod), but it's a basically heap of shit - heavy, big, ugly, and, as it turns out, less than robust.

Thing is, I can't live without portable music - I listened to that thing for several hours every day. Ouch. Think I might get an i-pod mini - only 4GB but at least they're not five hundred bucks. If only I could be sure that won't crap out on me too. Makes my VISA hurt just thinking about it...