THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

Indulge me in a little off topic post tonight regarding various music devices...that may or may not end up in your network 

So the other day I wanted to see what all the religious wars over Zune versus IPod was all about and I wanted to see both for myself.  My sister has a 60 gig iPod as well as several partners in the office.  And regardless of the fact that it's not a business tool, I still have to support them since I support the home devices that attach to my network.  And one of the annoyances I've yet to figure out how to work on iTunes is syncing one device to two machines.

And I wanted to see for myself, in person, how Zune compared to iPod.  Besides my mp3 player broke anyway and I liked the images of the bigger screen ..Sister's ipod is hard to view stuff on ... so off I went to Amazon.com to buy a Zune.  The first thing of difference is that you can buy an iPod from the Apple store and get it custom engraved.  Vanity, yes, I know.  When I bought the Zune from icon, it bundled it with a travel kit, unlike Apple that didn't warn me I'd be back in a week looking for a power cord.

Score +1 to the apple store for the engraving
Score +1 to Amazon for the bundling offer

Box and Presentation once the unit has arrived is a near knock off of each other.  While I purchased a white Zune, the earphones are in black..there's a "Hey I'm really cool" image you get with the white earphones of iPod as it showcases to all other iPod users that you are one of "them"

Score +1 to Apple for the Group Bonding in the color of the earphones

Vlad warned me that the Zune device would give me biceps.  That it was a heavy unit. The unit is slightly larger than Sister's 60 gig iPod but not much heavier.  As someone in an article said... Apple wins on industrial design.. while the metal back does get fingerprints, the engravablility and smoothness of the case makes it more pleasing to the touch.  The slight roughness of the Zune's plastic case isn't as pleasing to the touch senses.

Score +1 to Apple for industrial design

The Store/Sync Software:
Load up cdrom in both.. both need immediate upgrades to both the ipod/zune units (firmware) and the software.  That always kills me.. I JUST bought the thing and the cdroms for both are out of date and both need firmware updates.

Zune is a lot more "teenager" focused on the images that it showcases.  I didn't quite notice when I was loading up the iTunes software quite so many images of the "Next" generation.  Given that just the other day I got an offer from AARP (uh I hope your database is wrong 'cause I'm not THAT old yet) but then again my reaction to the gyrating teenagers may be because I'm fast closing on on the "Well I was THAT generation but I guess I"m not THAT anymore, am I?"

Zune ..while like IPod where it will only allow you to have one partnership to one computer.. it is more like Windows Mobile in that on computer number two I can set up a Guest partnership and sync stuff that I buy on computer number 2 onto device.  If Itunes can do this.. I haven't found how to do this yet.  Score one for  the more "normal" Windows Mobile sync association.

Score +1 to Zune for the more obvious "guest partnership"

It's a lot easier as I've yet to see a similar thing in iTunes.. if it's there.. it's not obviousl.
The zune asks in the wizard about Xboxes and Media extenders and you can see how if you had a Zune on a home network, you'd could use the device as a media unit.  You can see the potential for the new Home Server and all the similar type of devices.

The Store:  Zune marketplace versus Itunes.

Content is king here and Itunes is the clear and ultimate winner.

Go into Zune markeplace and I can't buy Pirates of the Caribbean with Johnny Depp. While the Zune is the clear winner on the screen (the bigger screen is the clear advantage here, the buttons (to me anyway) are more physically responsive than the iPod (rather than that rolly circle thing, its' more rocker bar up down.. again more like phones I'm used to) The reality is that at the present time, Zune is a rip your own library and sync to it device as the Itunes media content catelog leaves Zune's marketplace in the dust.  The Ipod's smaller screen doesn't make for easy viewing of some of the movies we've downloaded... and impossible to share the view on a train traveling to Los Angeles (which is why I take the tablet and email the whole way down and Sister watches her ipod.  Screen size is very very nice and the clear winner here....but.. if they don't sell videos on the Zune marketplace... and it's near impossible to rip DVDs in an illegal manner.... the screen size argument may be moot if you can't get legal content on the device.

Add to that the bother/and or illegal-ness of being able to get stuff you bought in itunes over to the Zune... MS needs to buy/signup/get contracts with content makers.  You can have a decent hardware but if the content isn't there... all it is is a MP3 player (or in my case a great SBSpodcast device ;-)

Software.  Zune loses here.... not because of the content issue listed above..but because of this:
http://www.zunecorps.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=106&page=1

I now here a little (zzznnn  zzznnnn   zznnnnn sound from the disks on my harddrive as that service does this "pulse" like activity on the drives.  We're going to nuke that service, thank you very much.  And a heads up to any network admins who's users brought a Zune into your office.. that application is very "piggy" and needs to be configured to not run.  You'll see that hogging up a bit of your computer systems CPU time and that's too high of a % of CPU power for a service like that.  I'm running the latest software so they'll need to work on that.  Funny thing is I see it on my home MCE machine, but not the one at the office.. weird...

Bottom line Winner?

iPod ....not so much for the device itself as the Zune is nicer from a screen standpoint but because content and software is king.  David Shackelford did note that the other content difference is the "rent" factor of content that iTunes doesn't have.

But the Zune size wise isn't the exercise device that Vlad said it would be... I think I'll still need free weights to bulk up in the biceps.

P.S. to Vlad.. that's not an Ad.. it's art silly... and you know what they say about Art is in the eye of the beholder you know...

Do watch your "my music" folder as both iPod and Zune stick the purchased music there and if you have redirected My Docs to the server, you're now sticking that "stuff" on your server.

(update:  The Zune networking service isn't hogging the CPU anymore... I think it was indexing or something... all is quiet now)