Software and Battery Life
That's the main view in MediaSource that you'll interact with, MuVo² wise. The MuVo's filesystem sits on the right hand pane - in this case I'm editing a playlist - and you highlight directories of music, or individual files, before clicking the arrow that copies them to the MuVo. The arrow in the other direction does the opposite, deleting the file from the Microdrive storage internal to the unit.
That's it. Playlists are edited by double clicking on them and treating the empty space shown as just somewhere else to put files. The MuVo² does its own abstraction internally, creating space on the filesystem for each collection of playlisted files, the user gets hidden from it. Rightly so, the concept of a playlist as a folder for a collection of files is a valid one.
In terms of ripping CDs as a source for music for the MuVo², the process is much the same. Pop a CD in your drive, rip to disk using MediaSource using the codec settings of your choice, upload to the MuVo², enjoy your music on the move. It's no-brainer software, simple to use, just how it should be. Like all skinned and themed applications, I wish the option were there to have it display its GUI with the default Windows widget set, but it's a minor quibble when the flaws in the application are minor.
As a media player, it's no Winamp or Windows Media Player 9 substitute, but it's competent enough and does the job without fuss or bother.
A highlight of my MuVo² experience, something I wasn't expecting.
Battery Life
Creative claim 10 hours for the MuVo² 4GB in general, continuous use. The flash storage MuVo²'s enjoy 16 hours of continuous playback time. In practice, from a full charge and using the MuVo² 4GB normally; an hour or so of playback here, an hour there, switching the device on and off each time, I managed a healthy 9.25 hours, not too far from the rated playback time. Apple's iPod mini is rated to 8 hours, for comparison with an obvious rival.Recharge time from empty seems to only be an hour and a half and can be accomplished while you're using the unit. I'd recharge it while sitting writing at the computer, listening to music on it. By the time I was finished writing and ready to go out, it was ready to rock on a full charge again. Obviously it'll take longer to charge that way, but it's doable. The AC adaptor is small enough so that it can hide out of the way, the cable end sat somewhere handy to plug in when needed.
