Creating the Ultimate MP3 Playlist

If I've been a little quiet lately, it's the fact that I continue to be consumed with the sheer amount of work involved in updating my music library, categorizing everything, and then selecting the 8 gigs worth of songs to put on my new Creative Zen V Plus MP3 Player. I feel like my right arm is about to fall off. I'm more than halfway there though, with 907 hand-selected songs already chosen to be part of the soundtrack to my trip of a lifetime!

Among the lucky artists set to accompany me….

• AFI
• Allen Ginsberg (reading “Howl”)
• Ben Harper
• Bob Dylan
• Bob Marley
• CKY
• Dinosaur Jr
• Frank Sinatra
• Green Day
• Guns ‘n Roses
• Iron Maiden
• Jay-Z
• New Found Glory
• Orbital
• Paul Oakenfold
• Sublime
• The Pogues
• Ween
• ….and many, many more

For those in the market for a new MP3 player, I am extremely satisfied with the Zen Plus. I felt a little blind buying it, as they don't really let you get your hands on them in the retail stores. It's super light weight, easy to operate, and fun to use.

The screen is a seemingly small 1.5 inches, however video plays pretty well on it. To (ahem) test it out, I transferred my TV interview. The odd part is that while the file was 30 megs, the compression increased the file size by almost 3x (to about 80 megs). Perhaps someone can help explain that to me? Otherwise, the FM tuner works well, it has line in recording (to get tracks direct from CD's), photo storage, on the fly playlists, and the ability to store data files (documents).

The only downside I can see is that it recharges based on a USB connection. Luckily, I have my eye on a power converter which includes a USB interface. Still, I could easily use up the whole 15-hour battery life on my first flight to New Zealand.

Dave Lee

Dave is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Go Backpacking and Feastio. He's been to 66 countries and lived in Colombia and Peru. Read the full story of how he became a travel blogger.