Zune first impressions

Published Mon, Oct 20 2008 21:39

Last week I’ve finally received my black 8GB Zune. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed with it.In fact, I’m really disappointed with it. First, there’s the look and feel. After holding an IPod nano, you won’t really like the Zune (and yes, the nano is not as good as the real thing). Yes, the Zune is slim and small, but the IPod has something special that makes you want hold it forever (probably it’s that cool wheel). Navigation in the Zune is not bad, but it’s not better than in the IPod.

Now, the really bad thing about it: installing software and copying music to the Zune. Let me tell you that I’m not an ITunes user, but when I had to set up my mother’s IPod, I was able to do it in just a few minutes. Not the same experience with the Zune. First, I lost count of the number of times I had to restart the Zune because, somehow, the connection was always falling.

After updating the software, I couldn’t really copy any mp3 to the Zune. Once again, there were connection problems. Interestingly, I’ve found one or two posts that said that the connection problems might be caused when you have all your USB ports in use (which was my case). So, I decided to try my luck with the notebook. After a couple of connection problems, I was finally able to copy the damn music to the Zune.

And that app you use to copy/delete stuff from your Zune…it’s simply awful. So, yes, I can tell you that I won’t be recommending it to anyone…

by luisabreu

Filed under: Trivia

Comments

# Bertrand Le Roy said on Monday, October 20, 2008 5:37 PM

Exact opposite impressions: I've owned several iPods and for me the Zune is doing right everything the iPod does wrong. I like the sofware (hated iTunes), absolutely love the UI and never had any connectivity problems.The Zune has been overall less flashy, more efficient and just a pure joy to use after those years of using an iPod. And every year, the device gets updated which Apple will probably never, ever do.

# Rod Trent said on Monday, October 20, 2008 5:55 PM

First of all, you have the wrong Zune. You need the 80GB or more. 8GB isn't really much room for songs, podcasts, and video.

Next, if you're having connection problems, I would look at either user error or PC problems that exist already, and post about those experiences where you were able to post your findings and help others out. Since both your computer and your Mom's are having similar issues, I'm going to assume that you set both of them up.

Zune software installation is intended to be easy, and it is. Connecting and transferring is a flawless activity.

# luisabreu said on Tuesday, October 21, 2008 4:24 AM

Guys, what can I say? :)

The only thing I liked was its navigation (which worked as expected).

Bertrand, I don't think Zune's app is decent. Let me aks you a question: how can you see what's on your Zune and desktop music collection at the same time? In ITunes, that's easy (at least if you use playlists). Probably there's a way to do that, but it's not really intuitive (which makes me think that lots of animations really suck if they don't improve the usability o fthe product).

As I said, the updates didn't work very well on my main machine (I did managed to update it to version 3.0, but lost more than one hour doing that). I don't like the UI and Zune's site suck. I was using a latpop when I downloaded it. So I downloaded the wrong version (I'm using vista 64 bits) because I just clicked the 1st visible download link ( the 64 download was at the end of the pate which wasn't visible on the browser - yes, you can say that it's my fault, but you can also say that the damn page should have put both options side by side).

Rod, yes, the 80 or 120 would have been a better option, but the 8 GB version is more than enough for me. Regarding the error code, I probably should have written it down. If it pops up again, I'll do that. Zune installation should be easy, but it was a nightmare in my case because I had to constantly reset the Zune (and it seems like I wasn't alone because I remember seeing lots of hit for the same error code - in fact, the suggestion that worked was taken from one of those pages).

What I'm trying to say is that I'm really disappointed with it. I expected a much better product from MS (at least, I'm used to that whenever I buy something from MS).