Avoid the loony Zune

November 23, 2006
BY ANDY IHNATKO
Yes, Microsoft's new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I've spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.

"Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

The setup process stands among the very worst experiences I've ever had with digital music players. The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal, I found myself asking my office goldfish, "Has it really come to this? Am I really about to manually create and install a .dll file?"

But there it was, right on the Zune's tech support page. Is this really what parents want to be doing at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning?
» Click to enlarge image
The new Zune portable media player represents Microsoft Corp.'s effort to compete against Apple's iPod will include wireless technology to let people share their favorite songs, playlists or pictures with other Zune users.
(AP/Microsoft)

That might not be Zune's fault. After about a year of operation, it's almost as if a Windows machine develops some sort of antibodies that prevent it from recognizing new hardware. But what's Microsoft's excuse for everything else?

Only the Zune software can sync music, video and pictures onto the device; Zune is incompatible with Windows Media Player, the familiar hub of the Windows desktop media experience.

The Zune app doesn't even have as many features as WMP. And why (for the love of God) doesn't it support podcasts? That's pure insanity.

It's incompatible with Microsoft's own PlaysForSure standard, too.

You'll have to buy all-new content from the new Zune Marketplace.

Oh, and the Zune Marketplace doesn't even take real money, proving that on the Zune Planet there's no operation so simple that it can't be turned into a confusing ordeal. The Marketplace only accepts Zune Points, with an individual track typically costing the equivalent of the iTunes-standard 99 cents.

By forcing users to buy blocks of Zune Points (with a $5 minimum), the Marketplace only has to pay one credit-card processing fee.

Zune Points will also make it easier for the Zune Marketplace to institute variable pricing. The music industry wants it desperately. The industry has been pressuring Apple to abandon its flat 99 cent pricing and start charging more for "hot" tracks.

Apple has stood firm against this, insisting that low, uniform prices keep sales high and discourage the iTunes Store's users from downloading music illegally.

I'm certain Microsoft will cave on this one. It has already given the music industry the other thing the industry has been demanding from Apple: a kickback on every player sold.

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," said Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. "So it's time to get paid for it."
Well, Morris is just a big, clueless idiot, of course. Do you honestly want morons like him to have power over your music player?

Then go ahead and buy a Zune. You'll find that the Zune Planet orbits the music industry's Bizarro World, where users aren't allowed to do anything that isn't in the industry's direct interests.

Take the Zune's one unique and potentially ginchy feature: Wi-Fi. You see this printed on the box and you immediately think "Cool. So I can sync files from my desktop library without having to plug in a USB cable, right? Maybe even download new content directly to the device from the Internet?"

Typical, selfish user: How does your convenience help make money for Universal? No wonder Doug despises you.

No, the Zune's sole wireless feature is "squirting" -- I know, I know, it's Microsoft's term, not mine -- music and pictures to any other Zune device within direct Wi-Fi range. Even if the track is inherently free (like a podcast) the Zune wraps it in a DRM scheme that causes the track to self-destruct after three days or three plays, whichever comes first.

After that, it's nothing more than a bookmark for purchasing the track in the Zune Marketplace. It amounts to nothing more than free advertising.

The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure. Toshiba's Gigabeat player, for example, is far more versatile, it has none of the Zune's limitations, and Amazon sells the 30-gig model for 40 bucks less.

Throw in the Zune's tail-wagging relationship with music publishers, and it almost becomes important that you encourage people not to buy one.

The iPod owns 85 percent of the market because it deserves to. Apple consistently makes decisions that benefit the company, the users and the media publishers -- and they continue to innovatively expand the device's capabilities without sacrificing its simplicity.

Companies such as Toshiba and Sandisk (with its wonderful Nano-like Sansa e200 series) compete effectively with the iPod by asking themselves, "What are the things that users want and Apple refuses to provide?"

Microsoft's colossal blunder was to knock the user out of that question and put the music industry in its place.

Result: The Zune will be dead and gone within six months. Good riddance.

Andy Ihnatko writes on technical and computer issues for the Sun-Times.

Microsoft gets music player all wrong




http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/147048,CST-FIN-Andy23.article

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Adam Lumsden
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Vice-President of the MBCA International Stars Section

I love reviews like that. That is freaking hilarious!

i love my ipod 30 gig video..... i dont need a radio on it... i like my own music.. if i wanted a radio id get xm portable, and i want to listen to my own music.. not some losers crap.. and the thing.. zune is crap brown.. pfft hardly my fav brown.. ill take my white ipod

Andy riffing on any Microsoft product is like reading a Howard Dean op/ed piece about the RNC.

But that's not to say that he's completely off base when it comes to the Zune. From other tech review, it's pretty clear that the device has some real "user friendly" issues. One thing that Andy doesn't mention is the amount of PC horsepower needed on the sync computer, typically a XP/Win2K PC running 1.5GHz or better, while iTunes works on lesser Mac and Windows PC platforms.

Consumers will decide the marketplace winner, but there are too many niggly little quirks with the Zune to make it a clear choice over the venerable iPod icon.

I hate to see them fail at anything. On the other hand Microsoft seems to have become everything they were against at the beginning. They over complicate everything.

I have an I Pod and on the basis of that, I intend to buy a Mac the next time I buy a computer. I suspect I am not alone in that sentiment. Apple's stock price seems to support this notion as well.

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" We have nothing to fear but the main stream media itself . . . ."- Adapted from Franklin D Roosevelt for the 21st century

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I've got my black and white non-video 20 gig Ipod and a 256MB memory stick/MP3 player w/FM receiver called the Creative MuVo TX.

The Ipod works great when it works, which is 98% of the time.
Granted, I've got it running on a PIII 700 mhz Windows XP with a USB 2.0 card, (which I wonder if it's really working at 2.0), but it does work.
Podcasts are fun.
The other 2% of the time, the Ipod drives me insane. Either Itunes needs to be reinstalled, or I need to actually switch from a USB to the firewire cable, or I need to do a reset (sometimes dicey), or some combination to make it work.
The problem is the whole sync process. If it's not happy, it essentially locks up. For the times it doesn't work, it takes an average of 2 hrs to solve the problem.
One time, only after multiple trips to the Ipod lounge forum, it was determined that the little ribbon cable at the base of the inside of the Ipod had become ever so slightly misaligned, which can happen even if the thing as treated like a piece of fine china, which mine is.
The solution? Keep in mind it's a hard drive.......with the power off, whack it against your palm really hard (calm down, Mistress H)
It worked. I did that once last year and it's been fine ever since.

As for the USB connection, the only reliable connection/sync with my slow Windows XP PC happens when the Ipod is the only USB device attached to the computer.

If I was a paying customer for the Ipod, I'd be furious, but I won this at a trade show, so I deal with it. The fact that I've got close to 5000 tracks is just heaven.

The MP3 player has given me no trouble at all, has no moving parts, and easily doubles as file storage, but I choose what I load before I travel, while the Ipod allows me fantastic variety.

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it doesnt sound like the ipod is the problem to me, it sounds like its ur pc.

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Sounds like you might wanna try 40, 256M memory sticks.

dee8go-

When the devil has MS EVER followed the path of simplicity in design? Perhaps you are mixing up 'simplicity' with 'simply buying everything....'

cheers,
dan r.

check out ilounge.com/forums a website just for ipods...

I was the "first kid on the block" with an iPod nearly 6 years ago. To be honest I have never had a single sync problem with mine. The only issue I have had is a slightly kinked headphone plug that causes the iPod to think the plug got pulled and pause every now and then.

My girlfriends family all have iPod minis. They had countless problems syncing to their win xp dell. I have since fixed that problem by plugging in the cable to the rear (instead of the front) ports and done some interesting driver tweaks. The funny thing is that they work fine with her mac.

__________________
Adam Lumsden
(83) 300D
Vice-President of the MBCA International Stars Section

[QUOTE=LaughingGravy;1342536]"...If I was a paying customer for the Ipod, I'd be furious, but I won this at a trade show, so I deal with it." [QUOTE]

Hey, LG!

There's your problem...your iPod is "B-stock!" Items "schleped" from one trade-show to another, banged and tossed around, sat on and LORD KNOWS WHAT ELSE! The retailer can't sell it to a customer, or it was sent back to the factory floor for a "repair," then re-boxed for trade-show purposes. Sometimes, you get what you pay for! In this case, you're getting a good 98% and a slightly irritating 2%...Not bad for "Free"!!!

If you were to go out a buy a brand new iPod (A-stock), I'd bet that would be your 2% solution!

As for the Zune...if it has MicroSoft as it's parent - inbreeding begets (Insert favorite animal/vegtable/mineral/World-Dominating-Despot here...).

Let the "patches" begin!

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ Yogi Berra ~

Does anyone have any advice on the Sony Walkman MP3 player or the Sandisk MP3 player?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat13504&type=page&pageIdentity=searchDriven&useProductString=true&productString=1202649765792*1190678467540*1216423923294&unProductString=1188562603863*1202649765659*1218008590958*1216423923423*1202649765920*1211587312779* 1218006820736*1218006820215*1218008588320*1218006819471*1218008371674*1202649766250&catId=

Both of them look OK to me?
I was thinking of getting one of them for a teenager.

Danny

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Danny

I bought my son a Sansa M250 which is a great inexpensive MP3 player.
Since it wasn't an IPOD, and therefore not cool, he had no interest in it.

It is now my MP3 player.

Hope you have better luck with a non-IPOD.

Bought my wife a Sandisk player a few years back and she loves it. I loved the fact that it was way cheaper than an Ipod and works better than a Zune