Zune Review November 18, 2006
Posted by stoykish in Audio.trackback
The expectations were for Microsoft to deliver a “Microsoft” product, not all the user friendly, commonly bugged, and both rugged and rigid. Microsoft did just that, it delivered a typical product, not underwhleming but not extrordinary. Read on for the review and make up your own mind on wheter Zune deserves a spot on your upcoming wishlist.
Hardware
The Zune is about as wide as a 5gb Ipod but taller, heavier, and thicker than even the 80GB version. What do you get for that extra size? A larger 3-inch display — which, like the iPod, is also QVGA — and WiFi (802.11b/g). You lose battery life by comparison, which is crucial considering the 5G iPod isn’t exactly known for its battery performance. 
The device layout is simple: static five way d-pad (that, of course, looks like a scroll wheel — more on that in a bit), dedicated back and play / pause buttons, a dock connector and audio-out port, and hold switch. A really cool feature of the Zune is the magnetic headphones which wind up nicely and dont fly all over the place when you want to use them. All in all a solid machine with an impressive display and standard navigation controls.
Interface and Menu
Zune adds the experience of viewing albums and their respective cover art. Nice! Generally speaking, however, you’ve got to get yourself used to the way the the “twist interface” (the Zune team’s name for PMC2) works. You’ve got categories up top (albums, artists, genres, songs, etc.), and moving left or right drops down a selection. This is generally a faster method of navigating large amounts of media, unlike the iPod,which example, requires you to back all the way out of your hierarchy to access your media from a different angle (for example switching from song view to artist view). Adding songs to a playlist, selecting tracks to send to another Zune, going from music to video, all of these common experiences are easy and quick to do. The photos, WiFi community, and radio are both nice features which are well done and easy to use as well.
Software and Music Service
Definetly the weakest point or fault of the Zune is the Music Service. The marketplace jsut doesnt have enouhg music altough we are almost definite that will change because this Zune is the first of many products in a line. The software is pretty decent and hooking up with your pc should present no real problem, same goes for you Xbox 360 as well. Overall great software support but the marketplace simply lacks media for now…
Verdict
All in all a great portable audio system with a great future ahead of it.
To get more reviews or suggested retailer check out the following links
I do not own either an i-pod or a zune. I am looking for my kids. They all like the 30G i-pods. I was in Circut City today and saw a Zune. I was impressed that for the same G and same price I would get a bigger screen. After researching till i was blue… No one seems to own one that can honestly answer my simple questions. 1) can I put songs from a CD on it? 2) Can I transfer music from i-tunes program to it? 3) Can I put songs (MP3, WAV, etc) that are on my computer, downloaded and paid for, on it? 4) Can I put my DVD movies on it? 5) Do I have to use and pay for all songs I want to play on Zune from their website only? Can I use Napster songs, realplayer, Windows Media player, I-tunes, ect??? Please help me, My kids don’t mind not having the sterotypical i-pod, they seem to love the large viewing screen.
Yes , first you put thre cd songs on your pc then u put them on the zune. im 99% sure u can play all songs on it, not just from the website. im not sure if u can use itunes to transfer since that is branded by apple, the zunes rival. as far as dvd goes, i beleive there is a way but u have to encode the dvd first, then transfer it
http://www.dvdtozune.com/, thers alot of other sites, just do a google.
thank you for you comment
how do you put songs on a zune if i just bought it?