Creative Zen Review, Part 3

Previously, I had described some of the experiences I have had with my new Creative Zen [creative.com] portable media player (PMP). This is part 3. [Go to part 1, part 2, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7.]

Previously, I had alluded to the bookmarking leaving a lot to be desired. Allow me to explain in more detail. First off, you can set a total of 10 bookmarks at any one time. I really only use one bookmark (overwriting it every time I need to set a new one). The bookmark screen shows the title of the song that each bookmark is set in, along with how far into the song the bookmark was set:


Anyway, let's say that you have told the player to play all of the MP3s in a particular genre or by a certain artist, etc. It will then create a playlist on the fly (as expected):


Then, in the middle of playing a file, you decide that you are going to set a bookmark, intending on coming back later. It turns out that when you use the main menu to select a bookmark to resume from, it will create another playlist on the fly with only the file that contains the bookmark:


What I really would like is the ability to tell the player to load all of the files of a particular genre or from a particular artist, and then tell it to start playing that list from the bookmark that I have set. But I haven't been able to figure out how to do that (and the documentation is TERRIBLE). As a result, whenever I want to resume from a bookmark, I do the following:

1. Load up the list of files that I want to play,
2. Look at the bookmarks screen (which tells me which file and how far into the file the bookmark is set),
3. Make a mental note of where I was,
4. and then manually fast-forward through the file to get to where the bookmark was set.

It really shouldn't be that difficult or user-unfriendly.

[Go to part 1, part 2, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7.]