So, I have this MP3 player. It's a Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra, by Creative, and I'm pretty much in love with it. My parents gave it to me for my 20th birthday, so it's coming up on five years old. I have dropped it on hardwood and cement floors, exposed it to toxic amounts of ceramic-related dust and other insidious art related substances, and taken it out in the rain at night on numerous occasions, and it still works perfectly. The leather case is beginning to disintegrate and the snap is rusting, the original earbuds it came with are long dead, and it has outlived two pairs of replacement earbuds I bought for it. The one age-related fault it has is that the original battery no longer holds a charge very well, and the replacement battery I got for it doesn't fit as snugly as it should, so that if I use the new battery the player will sometimes randomly shut off, so I can only use it for 6-7 hours away from a power source. Its copyright notice is from 2003, so it's from the Stone Age of MP3 players. I'm kind of hoping it will live forever, but if it dies I can tell you right now that there will be tears and its replacement will probably also come from Creative.
This afternoon, I learned how ancient it really is. I decided to use Amazon UK's MP3 download service (yes, I know) which downloads tracks to Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player tells me that the drivers for my MP3 player are outdated, and sends me to their website. Their website is baffled and sends me to the Creative website, which informs me that the Nomad Jukebox Zen is so old that it has been archived and "has reached the end of its service life." I can't even download updated drivers! That is so alarming. Fortunately, the software it came with doesn't realize that it's obsolete, so I can still put stuff on it. But still. I guess 6 years is a long time in MP3 player years.
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