ms zune/buy an mp3 player, get the experience
published on:July 29, 2008 / 12:09
back to overviewI am not an Apple fan. At all. But still, I've been carrying an iPod for over 6 years, and I really liked the little thing. Sadly, it wasn't the same iPod I'd been carrying, and after my third one broke I was simply too pissed to spend 300+EUR on yet another pod that wouldn't even last me 2 years. So I looked at the competition and found there was next to none. Except for the Zune that is, Microsoft's alternative. It looked decent enough so I just went ahead and bought me one.
the good
I've been playing with it for about two weeks now and I'm pretty happy with the piece of hardware. It's pretty big but that just means you get a bigger screen, which is pretty nice. It handles well, though there's none of that fancy touch and rotate stuff. Real gadget freaks will probably be disappointed about this. The interface is pretty simple and even though there's no real on/off button, the 2-second press is a lot easier than the earlier 5-second squeeze juggle on the iPod.
Most notable is the Zune styling, which is pretty fresh and hip. The use of fonts is remarkable and the twirly graphics are pretty cool. The Zune itself looks nice enough too. You could argue that it will look pretty outdated in 4 or 5 years time, but even the slick, minimal design of the older iPods is pretty ugly compared to modern standards. I like the risk Microsoft took there.
I haven't been playing around with the pictures and video options that much, as I don't see any good reason to put them on my Zune. I use it to listen to music walking to work and back, watching pictures or movies might be dangerous doing such a thing in a busy city. The radio is fine for those people who actually listen to the radio, but not really my cup of tea either. At least it's nice to see it's all there, and it's done well.
One final interesting aspect of the Zune is its wireless sharing abilities. Sadly, I'm probably one of the only people in my country owning a Zune, so chances are quite slim I'll be putting it to good use. But beaming songs to each other sounds like a pretty nice idea to me.
the bad
Sadly, buying just a Zune is not an option. The Zune comes with an experience, and it sure is a painful one. The only way to get songs onto the device is by installing the Zune software. No alternatives, whatsoever. Imagine how pissed I was when I found out I was about 2 years of MS updates behind to actually be able to install the software. Various other problems popped up (low disk space, partitioning error, crashing IEs, etc etc) but after about 3 days I actually had it installed. So much for quickly throwing on some songs and heading out.
To be honest, installation on my work PC (which was fully updated) was a breeze, at least I got lucky there. Anyway, that's not all, because the Zune software isn't really made to transfer song to the Zune. Apparently MicroSoft mimicked Apple too much and made a new iTunes. It's a regular media library management tool, forcefully pushing you to rearrange and clean your whole media library to the whims of your software creator. Actually getting around that isn't as simple as it seems, so syncing (because that's what it does, it syncs, it doesn't transfer) between your hard disk and Zune is a damn tricky business.
Another point where Microsoft completely fails is in their policy to lock the Zune, ignoring its portable hard disk capabilities. Out of the box, the Zune can't be used as a portable hard disk. You can do some registry tricks to unlock it, but you still can't add files to your Zune. Actually getting stuff on there requires you to forcefully quit the Zune software while it's syncing. It works, but it's pretty annoying to work like that. No idea why they had to go and make it so hard for people to put some files on the damn thing.
the conclusion
Depending on what you think is important, the Zune is either a perfect buy or a complete waste of time and money. The Zune itself is ace, having a nice battery life, great screen and comfortable controls. The Zune software on the other hand is the worst piece of junk Microsoft ever produced. It will take you some time bypassing the bullshit, but once you're there you can happily use your player without too much hassle.
It's a shame though that they finally produced a killer appliance, and decided to fuck it up again by putting up way too many (unnecessary) restraints. If the software doesn't bother you, buy a Zune. If it does, don't even think about trying.
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4 comments in total
I am an Apple fan. Though I've never owned an iPod. Never had any need for it either, unless when travelling. All my music is on my laptop, I carry it with me everywhere I go and in the car I have CDs and radio. I don't walk/ride bike/commute to work so I simply have no reason for one.
My family and friends (except for Niels ;)) pretty much all do have one. They love it. My dad, who's 51, uses his 80GB iPod classic with ease as well as my 13 year old sister uses her 8GB iPod nano.
Of course they all use iTunes, this wasn't a problem for my sister because she started from scratch with music and didn't have to import anything. My dad however had a lot of music on his previous Windows PC + a whole lot of CDs he wanted to rip once he got his new Apple laptop. I explained iTunes to him and even advised him to check the option in iTunes' preferences to have iTunes manage your complete library.
When you have iTunes manager everything it copies every song you add to it to where it thinks it should save it. iTunes saves songs, based upon their ID3 tag information, under /Users/<username>/Music/iTunes Music/Artist/Album/01 Song Title.mp3. If your ID3 tag misses information to make up the folder path it will put it under Unknown Artist/ or Unknown Album/. This may seem daunting at first and completely not how you used to do it... It does for example create a new directory for an album of which you only own one song... You may not like that. But that doesn't matter at all. When using iTunes or Zune software... you don't need to be in your music library on disk anymore. The only way you need to see your music is through the software and this works miraculously well. This is also the only way it works smoothly. By trying to bypass "their" way of working you only get into trouble more, jumping through unnecessary hoops, making your life difficult.
Because all you need to do, is listen to music, and transfer it to your mp3 player. That's the essence. Trust the software to handle the rest nicely for you. This is where the Zune software problems rise. From what I've read multiple times online and from what I've seen at Niels' place... it doesn't handle your music nicely at all. Microsoft wanted to mimic iTunes' simplicity, but over-simplified and doesn't give you the slightest control over your music. The biggest blunder I can think of is how they don't even let you edit ID3 tags... which, for so many years already, is the standard way of cataloguing songs/albums/artists... When you have iTunes manage your music the changes you make in iTunes, simply filling out the album title for example when it was blank before, will be reflected on disk and the album will move from Unknown Album/ to The Album Title/. So the more you easily edit your songs' information in iTunes the better it gets auto-arranged on disk for you. This is a huge advantage in my opinion as you don't have to worry about naming your files in Finder or Explorer anymore, it's done for you.
Another disadvantage in Zune software is that it only lets you sync it seems. While under iTunes you can choose to sync or to manage your music manually, by dragging songs to the iPod when it shows up in the left sidebar.
Also the fact that Niels told me you can't even resize the Zune software window. That's incredible. Maybe this wouldn't be a problem if the screen real-estate Zune software used would be put to good use. But what I see is that you get mostly whitespace... with some links and song titles thrown on it in pretty unorderly fashion. It doesn't give you a concise overview of your music library at all.
The omission of smart playlists is pretty bad as well... These are playlists that are auto-constructed based on how you rate your songs or how often you play them... You can make up any criteria and songs will be filed under the appropriate playlist when they meet these criteria. I can't say much about this because I don't have an iPod and don't use them, though I know they can be very handy to have them auto-sync to your music player.
Another reason to prefer iPods over Zunes is the mobile hard-drive function iPods have out of the box. As Niels said doing this with a Zune requires killing your zune software... This is completely insane + it requires ugly registry hacking. It's compatible with Windows only. This might not be a problem if you only use it to transfer files between your own Windows PCs (which need the reg-hack) but soon, and now I'm being optimistic, 10% of the computers will be Apple computers so the chance of not being able to share files with someone else increases. iPods can be used on Windows, Mac and Linux with ease. And I even remember using Niels' iPod to transfer files to my computer... no more. Though there's a WLAN now so it should be even less of a problem.
Syncing music with other tools than Zune software can be done by making use of the hard to find zAlternator hack, but this also requires to quickly kill the Zune software process every time it sets up a sync... So it's not useable at all.
Lastly, about the feel of the Zune... I wasn't convinced either. It felt cheap to me. It seemed less heavy than my dad's iPod, which isn't a bad thing at all of course, but it also had this cheap feeling attached to it. There are fancy touch controls as you can slide your finger down over the 2cm high d-pad to scroll down... but seeing as you can't do this in a continuous motion as with an iPod's rotary touch-wheel this is completely useless. Moreover the clicking sound of the d-pad sounded cheap and you'll be clicking a lot on this thing.
I'm not convinced at all by the Zune and its software. Though it has some hardware advantages over an iPod of which FM would be useful for some. Squirting songs is absolute crap on the other hand, you can only listen to squirted songs 3 times, lifting this limitation would be a nice addition. It's no wonder this product is completely flopping in the US, forcing MS to sell loads of their stock at a loss in a futile attempt to lock as many people as possible to their software and music marketplace.
iTunes may not be perfect, but it offers you more control over what it does with your music (opposed to what Zune software does "to" your music), whether it be managing all music on disk, syncing, or manual song transfer... It uses ID3 as a standard. Has a better/more condensed visual lay-out of the software. Offers a mini-player mode. And it's compatible with more than 1 software platform.
I hope Zune software 3.0 will add some much needed features. Until then... I advise you to at least try and use it as intended, it will cause you less trouble... or.. just ditch it on eBay and get an 8GB (soon 16GB?) iPod nano. Flash players are so much faster than those spinning disks...
Can't do much with an MP3 player below 20GB, so not really an option. And like I said, screw iPods since they seem to be dying on me after only 2 years.
Strange, since I think it beats the iPod hands down on that criteria (not talking about the iPod touch now). The controls are way easier than the messy scrollwheel, which expected you to do regular kung fu tricks to operate the iPod. Plus you looked like a retard scrolling that wheel trying to browse through your entire playlist :p
As long as you keep using that piece of software. It's seriously limiting imo.
Nice article but one question remains: How long does/would a zune last?
I know that's a bit of a guess, but it only needs to last me about a year to equal the iPod, and if it doesn't, it probably falls under waranty.
I figured that was worth the gamble.
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