Last Friday I decided to see how well the 30 day return policy at Best Buy would work.  I returned my Samsung MP3 player and they gladly exchanged it for whatever I wanted.  As previously mentioned I decided to go for the Creative Zen Micro since it supports subscription DRM services.  BestBuy.com has the player $10 cheaper than the store and they had no problem taking the extra $10 off during the trade in.  Best Buy gets a +1 for this!

Of course I could not wait to rip into my new device and give it a spin.  All was well until I did the latest flash upgrade.  This was required for it to support subscription music.  After the upgrade my laptop refused to see the device.  I assumed it was defective and returned it to Best Buy and got it replaced, again with no problems.  You can imagine how bummed I was when the 2nd Zen had the same problem as the first.  After searching the net for others with the same problem I found that I was not alone.  Since Creative Tech support is closed on weekends I decided to wait until today to call them.  I brought the device to the office to see if my work PC liked it.  Guess what, no problems.  Now I have an interesting dilemma.  My cool MP3 player will not work with my home PC.  Next thing is to rebuild the home PC and see if that takes care of the problem.  Forget calling Tech Support, at least for now.

Microsoft, Creative and other players in the subscription audio world are going to have to make this stuff work flawlessly or they may find MP3 players thrown through the Windows.  I don't mind being on the bleeding edge of technology, but when my very recent hardware and completely up to date software do not work together I am not a happy boy!