A few months ago, I wrote about how to connect your iPod to your TS RemoteApps Server running under Hyper-V, which really simplified my life and made it simpler to keep everything in one place. I made that even easier by running FabulaTech's USB over Ethernet server on my main Windows 7 workstation, so I didn't have to get up and go into the server room to connect my iPod. Well, now that Zune supports Audible books, I took my old version 1 Zune and updated it to the latest software and gave it to my wife, who needed a new player since her ancient Zen Nano died. She has an iPod, but doesn't like it much, but just loves the old Zune. The radio works well here in our remote location, the picture quality is good, and the sound quality is way better than either the Zen OR her iPod. So, the challenge was how to get it installed on the Terminal Server so that it could be accessed over TS RemoteApps. With the Apple software, that was trivial, but the Zune software just wouldn't do it. Sigh. So, a bit of poking around (and asking Susan Bradley, who is way better than Google) found Robert Larson's post, which covered how to get it installed. Good, but now we need to get it into my Hyper-V. OK, FabulaTech to the rescue, and I finished installing the Zune software and sync'ing the Zune. (If you get prompted to update the version of software for the Zune over the Internet, ignore the prompt. It won't work anyway. As long as you've got a reasonably recent version that you've deconstructed, just use that.)
Next up was Audible. Installed the latest version of the Audible Manager (5.5.0.0 for this exercise). No problems, but it's not seeing the Zune. No sweat, tell it to Add Device, and it will give me a list of devices and download the software for them. Wrong Answer! That works fine for Apple software, but for the Zune? It needs to be loaded As Administrator. What a pain! OK, exit the Audible Manager, and restart it As Administrator, and now add the device. OK, that works, after a reboot, and we're in business. Just activate the device, and download the titles to it.
All in all, harder than it should have been. Ironic that Apple devices and software work better in Windows than Microsoft devices and software does, at least in this case.
Charlie.
UPDATE: Well, it turns out to be worse than I thought. While I can get the Zune to sync normal music and photos, the Audible content won't actually transfer to the Zune. Not sure why, but not at all happy about it. Audible Manager sees the Zune, can see any content that is there, and says it will transfer books. But then it stays stuck at 0% transferred. All in all, a far worse experience than with iPods. Sigh.
Update: After trying every trick I can think of, I’ve sent off email to the folks at FabulaTech to see what they can come up with. We’ll see. I’d really like this to work.