Found this from 1995 Zenith Z-Player
The Zenith Z-Player has been repackaged in a slightly different case but is still basically the same as in the review last year. It is a great combination of a CD-ROM
drive, stereo speakers, sound card, and microphone. It weighs 2 pounds stripped down (to play an audio CD) and less than 4 pounds with the cable and ac power
adapter, so it can turn a laptop computer into a multimedia-capable system without adding a lot of weight or bulk to the system. The Zenith Z-Player attaches to a
laptop computer through a Type II PC card slot with a one-piece card and cable (a very short cable!). It also has an optional ISA bus adapter card so it could be
used with a desktop computer. The unit comes equipped with an output jack for a headset or external speakers.
To use the Zenith Z-Player as a truly portable unit, you can purchase a NiCad battery pack which will provide 70 minutes of power or use 6 AA batteries which will
provide 30 minutes of power. When the batteries run down, plug in the ac adapter and you are back in business. Obviously you then loose some of the portability.
The data transfer rate is 300KBps, which means it is a double-speed CD-ROM. It is capable of reading both 3.5 and 5.25 inch CDs. It requires a 486 computer,
DOS 6.0, Windows 3.1, and 4MB of hard disk space.
On the downside, the manual is very sparse on technical support (but it is printed in five different languages) and assumes you know about installing PC cards and
you know how to use a CD player. In fact, you need to have the PC card socket services and card services drivers already loaded in your laptop. However, most
laptops (for example, the new Toshiba series) come with those pre-installed. The Z-Player speakers are adequate in a quiet room but unlike larger desktop
speakers, do not deliver enough volume to be useful in a very loud environment. They will only deliver sound in the Windows environment, so DOS-based programs
with sound cannot be heard.
The Zenith Z-Player did crash out of Windows occasionally when browsing the CD from Program Manager so that can be a nuisance. I could find no evidence that
the crash corrupted any files, so re-booting the system restored it to normal operation.
However, considering what you get in a 4 pound package, the Zenith Z-Player is a very good choice for portable multimedia and CD capability. Just take along your
ac adapter or a lot of batteries. List price is $499, SIL price is $483
