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Critical Review of the Zune
ceallaigh writes "Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times has a critical review of the Zune. "Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity."
At least with an Apple you can use it as a disk drive and use third party software to load it. People forget so fast that the first PC compatible iPods did not use iTunes but used Musicmatch. With the Zune you can't even mount it as a drive.
Yes, you can load music and video onto a Creative Zen Vision, Zen Vision M or Zen with Windows Media Player.
Personally I find the one year old, Creative Zen Vision, a far better iPod alternative. It has a 640by480 res screen,
30 GB HD, plays almost any video file downloadable (mpeg4, mpeg1, mpeg2, AVI, divx, xvid, mjpeg), allows you to read CF cards,
plays the radio, plays MP3's, Audible files and WMA files, record sound via a built in mic, plays also through an small external speaker,
allows you to view JPEGs and lets you output sound and video in full DVD quality to your TV and HT amp. It's a much better product, already out
for a year now.
The Chicago Sun Times is one of the biggest newspapers in the country. Possibly in the top three, definitely in the top ten. They are mainstream media.
That said, Andy is a former MacWorld columnist, who often supports Apple. His viewpoint can probably be considered somewhat biased. (Not that I don't agree with him, but I am also somewhat biased.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
This doesn't sound like something I want.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
This is not a review from PCWorld. It's a writer with the Chicago Sun-Times giving advice to parents for the holiday buying season.
The purpose of the review is not to give geeks a rundown of every single feature and whether it performs as expected. The purpose is to inform the reader about whether this is even a worthwhile product, given all the hype that surrounds it.
The reviewer did point out other options that don't suck as much as the Zune and are cheaper. So he's done his job in giving the average consumer an idea about whether this is a worthwhile product... just as a movie reviewer in the same paper would give you an idea about whether ANYONE should consider going to a particular movie. Most movies have some demographic that might enjoy watching it... but the same is not true for technology products, which may or may not even work as expected. There were at least two features the reviewer pointed out that do not work as expected, given the way they are portrayed on the box.
So it looks like the Zune isn't even worth considering. I'm glad that reviewer was honest enough to say so.
Here is a good one, this is a CNN review of the Zune
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buKaqRG2SFA&mode=r
It turns into an ad for the new ipod shuffle. It is hilarity.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Your comments about Windows are spot-on, but this time it's different.
The market for portable music players is not the same as the preloaded OEM software "market", nor are they entering a vacuum.
This time MS needs to make a good product that will stand on its own merits, or they'll bleed red ink until the shareholders tell 'em to quit.
Buy Korean. iRiver, Cowon, and Samsung's players all do Ogg Vorbis, and I'm sure others do too.
No, AAC is not locked in with Apple. It is part of the MP4 standard and the successor to MP3 (it is also known as MP4). All it has over MP3 (other than being higher quality at the same file size and support for more channels/bitrates/bitdepths) is that it ha mechanisms to allow for DRM. That said, AACs you encode yourself are DRM-less. Songs you buy from the ITS have Fairplay DRM (which is Apple's DRM). All none DRMd AACs will play in a Zune without modification (and several other players). While it is not open source (like .ogg), it is not any more closed source than .MP3 (how many of you out there know that media player makers have to play royalties to Thompson, etc. for the use of .MP3?)
I honestly don't know why AAC has not caught on more - it is so much more "open" than WMA, an has MUCH more broad support than .ogg.
-- .sigs are for suckers
MOD PARENT UP!
How is this flamebait? The GP is obviously a fairly well-informed technical person who tries to make intelligent choices about technology and standards and stuff... and yet, as the parent points out, the GP has chosen to keep all his music in a totally proprietary locked-down Microsoft format.
I'd say the parent's comments are entirely appropriate...
My bicyles
You were just trolling. iPodLinux runs GREAT on my Nano AND gives me the ability to run MAME on top of OGG support. Newer iPods just aren't supported as with "most open source projects" - the older releases are official ... the newer are "unofficial"
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny