khristopher.com

Well I received my Zune from Matchstick. If you want to get one for free like I did, click here.

In the package was an 8 GB Zune with headphones and 3 colours for the headphones. Pink, orange, and black. The Zune itself is black. There was also an AC charger. Personally I can’t believe the Zune only comes with USB attachment for charging. I prefer to charge through my AC charger because it’s faster I find. Also came with the premium headphones which are really cool, but any time you touch the wires you can hear it through the headphones while listening to music. They are too sensitive apparently. They’re fabric covered instead of rubber, which might be why, I’m not sure.

As for the product… I’m disappointed. I’ve been waiting so long for Zune to come to Canada. First of all 8 GB is not enough for me, which is not Zune’s fault, as they do have an 80 GB model available. The promotion however only had 8 GB models. The screen is far too small for my liking, which again is because the model size. The 80 GB model has a much larger screen.

The worst part of the Zune is not the product itself, it’s the software for updating it and listening to music on your computer. It lacks a lot compared to iTunes. It has no system tray icon, so when you minimize it, it goes to your taskbar, taking up valuable real estate there. It is very memory intensive and has a slow response considering how feature lacking it is. It also lacks my favourite feature of iTunes, which is the skip when shuffling option. You can’t update just the album cover, you have to update all of the mp3 tag info or none at all. Shuffling only works in some places in the player. The social aspect is definitely the best part of the software and experience. This is something that is seriously lacking from iTunes. The other crappy part is that Canada isn’t getting the full experience from Zune, as the Marketplace isn’t working right now. Apparently it’s coming later this year.

The FM tuner is very awesome. I like that I can keep up with anything that might be going on in the news. If something is happening in the world, I can just turn on the radio and find out the most up to date information if I’m on the go and don’t have access to a computer or TV.

Overall though, I am not impressed and have no intentions of buying the 80 GB version. This is mostly due to the software. Microsoft should know that in order to compete with iTunes, they need to have everything iTunes has and more. iPod Touch here I come! (When the price comes down.) Sorry Microsoft, I really wanted to like your product, but you failed.