Zune the iPod killer... yeah, not so much

[Blind_Io]

Two years of R&D: $30 million. Building 100,000 Zunes: $10 million. Having the folks at CNN laugh at your product and then show off their new iPod shuffles: Priceless

http://www.spicygadgetroll.blogspot....ou-my-new.html

Oh, and apparently your new Zune isn't even Vista compatible!
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=104

Yeah, suck it, Apple.

Oh, but this report from NBC (as in MSNBC, as in Microsoft) does a great comparison of the Zune to a 4 year old monochromatic non-video iPod (4th gen). Nothing to see here. Move along.

LGT Blog: http://fixyourthinking.com/2006/11/w...day-wrong.html

[BlaRo]

Who the hell's going to get rid of their iPod for a Zune?

A better question: who the hell's going to buy a Zune, anyway? What does the Zune have, wireless sharing of music, struck down by typical pointlessly aggressive filesharing protection? Incompatibility with pretty much everything except Microsoft's own unstable Media Player? Worst of all, no games? (A kid in my lab played Tetris on his iPod while we waited for a pointless chemistry lab experiment to finish, and it was sweet.)

Welcome to the suck.

In fact, I kinda want a 60gb video iPod now (still love my iRiver H10, though ). Might as well catch up with 2004, I suppose.

[BerserkerCatSplat]

Fuck Apple and Microsoft. I've got a 4" VGA screen and they can both just suck it.


...but in all seriousness, the Zune is a joke at the moment.

[BlaRo]

http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/13/i...e-zune-sucked/
Man, and I thought it was hard to sync my H10 with Windows Media Player. Zune Tag? Connect as a guest? ScapularWorm? WTF?

[Redliner]

Being a Linux user I won't even bother looking at this. (Nothing againt the iPod, before anyone jumps to conclusions!)

[bartboy9891]

there is a feature where you can send others that have Zune pictures and songs. But it only applies to "certain" songs, and the other person can only listen to it 3 times over the course of 3 days...

[Viper007Bond]

Microsoft are noobs and Apple are too... snooty I guess is the word I'd use.

My sister has a Cowon iAudio and while it has a couple faults, it's still totally awesome. Radio, videos (she often watches feature films on it or TV), music, recording off radio, it acts as a hard drive when you plug it in so no need for WMP or any of that shit to transfer songs (just drag files or songs into folders), etc.

Oh, and it's pretty cheap! (right?)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...iaudio&Ntk=all

She has a 20 gig I believe.

[andyhui01]

Originally Posted by Viper007Bond

Microsoft are noobs and Apple are too... snooty I guess is the word I'd use.

My sister has a Cowon iAudio and while it has a couple faults, it's still totally awesome. Radio, videos (she often watches feature films on it or TV), music, recording off radio, it acts as a hard drive when you plug it in so no need for WMP or any of that shit to transfer songs (just drag files or songs into folders), etc.

Oh, and it's pretty cheap! (right?)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...iaudio&Ntk=all

She has a 20 gig I believe.

Viper, the iPod can be plugged into any computer and you can use it as a Hard drive as well by dragging and dropping files.

and I believe Apple were the first to have such a thing, when I bought my 3G iPod about 2 years ago, I think I didn't have much choice as to what to buy... therefore I chose iPod.

[Viper007Bond]

Mmm, well still.

[NAIDANAC A]

I might buy the headphones thought. They look nice and are not too expensive. Also my ipod ones are dying, and my PHilips ones already died.

[jeffy777]

Originally Posted by andyhui01

Viper, the iPod can be plugged into any computer and you can use it as a Hard drive as well by dragging and dropping files.

And songs added this way will play on the iPod?

[TomCat]

With all the new BS coming up about Apple's new software and firewalls to protect against unlicensed MP3 files.... screw iPod. I'll just stick to my old portable CD/MP3 player.

[epp_b]

As much as I hate iPods, iTunes and all of that other iCrap, and would love to see them crushed; I'm sure enjoying seeing Microsoft fall flat on their faces with this super-flop

With all the new BS coming up about Apple's new software and firewalls to protect against unlicensed MP3 files.... screw iPod. I'll just stick to my old portable CD/MP3 player.

Pfft...how do those morons expect to "license" MP3 files? The MP3 format is open and unrestricted by design.

[gtrietsc]

Originally Posted by andyhui01

Viper, the iPod can be plugged into any computer and you can use it as a Hard drive as well by dragging and dropping files.

and I believe Apple were the first to have such a thing, when I bought my 3G iPod about 2 years ago, I think I didn't have much choice as to what to buy... therefore I chose iPod.

Yes, but you have to admit that without Itunes, its kludgy as hell to add or remove music to it, if possible at all. I gave up after I put some music on it through iTunes, and then browsed the file system of the device to find where it put the files - it encrypts the file names and sorts them in some crazy directory system. F that. I want to pitch this thing and get a regular MP3 player.

[Jacobfox]

I got to demo a zune at my local eb games.
What a piece of shit.
The interface is lousy, there's no intuitive scrolling system.
Fortunately there were only 13 songs on the device or i'd never have been able to see all of them.
It's a bloody d pad, for christ-sake. Not even close to as smart as apple's interface.
the menus were in nice color, but the ipod's just so much smarter.
The audio quality was poor, even compared to the ipod's rather poor quality
As with anything microsoft makes, there's some stupid fiascos involved (the whole incompatibility things, etc...).
Apple's product is hardly perfect, but it makes the zune look laughably bad.
If you don't want an iPod, buy a creative or a sansa. At least they don't look like and function like turds.

[Peter3hg]

Originally Posted by andyhui01

Viper, the iPod can be plugged into any computer and you can use it as a Hard drive as well by dragging and dropping files.

and I believe Apple were the first to have such a thing, when I bought my 3G iPod about 2 years ago, I think I didn't have much choice as to what to buy... therefore I chose iPod.

Actually the Minidiscs have had this capability for over 10 years.
I personally use a Sony NW-A1000.

I love it (apart from its currently away for repair) and I like it so much more than the iPods, its far less gimmicky, it is just a music player, nothing more which is what I want. The only crap thing about it is Sony's daft DRM. It can take mp3's but you have to stick it through Sony's software to wrap it in DRM so it'll play it. Other than that it's great.

[Hidden_Hunter]

I've yet to actually read an unbiased review of the Zune, engadgets review was total crap "it's not an ipod therefor it's crap" is pretty much their entire sentiment. They complained about how the zune software didn't install properally on their pc and was full of bugs then they go on to say that there RAID setup had failed due a disk failure then have a single sentence saying how it installed fine on one of their other pc's.

[andyhui01]

Originally Posted by Peter3hg

Actually the Minidiscs have had this capability for over 10 years.
I personally use a Sony NW-A1000.

I love it (apart from its currently away for repair) and I like it so much more than the iPods, its far less gimmicky, it is just a music player, nothing more which is what I want. The only crap thing about it is Sony's daft DRM. It can take mp3's but you have to stick it through Sony's software to wrap it in DRM so it'll play it. Other than that it's great.

Minidiscs? I've owned 2, first was the Sony one in Yellow that everyone had when it was popular, it could never store as much stuff (Don't tell me about MDLP as that thing was stupidly expensive) and let alone store electronic stuff that could be transferred from computer and computer.

And I was talking about transporting stuff... not music, iTunes syncs everything so easily, I've never even thought about not using iTunes in the first place.