MSRP: $499.99

Website: www.creative.com

The Nomad Jukebox holds up to 6 gigabytes of music in WMA or MP3 format. That's all that matters really, six full gigs of MP3 storage power at your hip. Jukebox is pretty much the perfect name for this thing.

Normal MP3 players can hold 32, 64 or maybe 128 MB worth of music, a mere 3-4 hours in total. That's actually pretty slick, isn't it? But what if that tiny device wasn't enough? What if you could carry around 6 gigs of music (150 CDs) around with you in a machine the size and weight of a Sony Discman. It's portable, full featured and powerful. It's a music geek's dream. Add a car-kit and you're good to go for, oh, about 150 hours of driving too.

Yes, six gigs of music (approximately 1000 songs) in a device with the size, weight and shape of a portable CD player. Not only that but you get the standard Nomad abilities to receive FM radio plus it has a microphone you can use to record conversation, lectures or interviews directly into stereo WAV format.

Unlike the small portables that use flash memory sticks, the Nomad Jukebox uses a 6gig hard drive for storage. Am I getting repetitive? It features a low signal-to-noise ratio of less than 90dB, the controls make sense and are quite intuitive. The screen is large enough to display all the info you need (assuming you tagged your MP3s in a way that makes sense). You can even search the drive for a particular song or style of music onscreen. It's a heady thrill putting 1000 songs on ‘shuffle' as well.