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Zune — $249.99 On Nov. 14

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-price-war-on-songs dept.

Cubricon writes, "As expected, Microsoft has dropped their price on the Zune in response to Apple's recent iPod updates. Ars Technica has an article that discusses the Zune's use of Microsoft's prepaid 'points' system for songs. Will the masses notice the difference between an iPod and a Zune? Will they want the FM and wireless capabilities?" The Zune lists for $0.99 more than the comparable iPod and songs from the Zune Marketplace will cost just under $0.99.

3 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. FM... by Kaenneth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Everyone should have a battery powered radio receiver. Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Flooding, Volcanos (like Mt. St. Helens) happen, and you need a way to receive emergency information about which way to run.

  2. What are we, retarded? by voice_of_all_reason · · Score: 5, Interesting

    but in the US a point is currently 1.25 cents

    Um, yeah. I'm not buying into some funky dirka-dirka currency that can fluctuate at the company's sheer will.

  3. MTP vs UMS by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Interesting
    > You can mount an iRiver, an iPod, (and I gotta believe a Zune) as a UMS device, working just fine on the "next generation of car stereos with USB."

    Read between the lines of this MS developer's post, in which he says "PlaysForSure does not require devices to support only MTP - UMS can be implemented too, but under certain conditions that prevent newbies from transferring content via MTP, switching to UMS and then calling tech support because they can't find/play their content"...

    Now re-read that sentence while pondering the notion that Zune will not support PlaysForSure.

    This is a Microsoft product. More so than Apple products, less so than Sony products, it's still all about vendor lock-in.

    I speculate that Zune will be an MTP (Media Transfer Protocol)-only device. UMS (USB Mass Storage) cannot be supported, because only by eliminating UMS can Microsoft mandate the use of WMP10/11 and the accompanying XP/Vista DRM platform.