Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player Black
Music and entertainment, your way. That’s what the Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player is designed to deliver. The Zune easily connects you with your music, videos, and pictures wherever and whenever you want, and unlike the iPod, it even has a built-in FM tuner so you can keep up with local news and sports. Your Zune gives you the power to wirelessly share full-length tracks, playlists, pictures and podcasts with your other Zune-wielding friends. And when you receive songs that you just can’t get out of your head, you can easily tag the songs and buy them the next time you sync up. Whether you’re listening to music, radio, or rocking out to the latest music videos on the bright, roomy screen, the Zune allows you to tailor your entertainment, right in the palm of your hand. Watch a demo on Zune. more info
Tagged with: Black • Digital • HPA-00001 • Media • Player • Zune
Joggers, Runners, Active People Beware!
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I’ll make this simple, if you are exercising in a way that involves a moderate amount of moving, this will break in 20-30minutes.
First off, I would have given this Zune a near perfect score, a 3 1/2 out of 4 if possible. But for our specific purposes it was useless! We used it with the official exercise arm band, made sure it was secure, and even attempted to minimize the arms movement. Walking, riding a bike to work on the pavement and weight lifting went fine. Light to moderate jogging or off road mountain biking was a completely different story. Consistently at about the 20 minute mark it began to skip like a disc man from the 90s. Next thing you know it would freeze and never again be usable. It would stay on that screen until the battery drained.
So if you are looking to exercise with an mp3 player, I’d stick with any flash based player. If you ever foresee working out with this, stay away.
(full disclosure: we went through 4 of these and not from the same store so we would ensure that it wasn’t simply a problem with a shipment.)
Absolutely Horrible
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I REALLY wanted to like this Zune. My excellent 20 GB Zen Sleek Photo is out of space, and no one seems to be making 30 GB + units anymore other than Zune. After dedicating the better part of two full days of my life to getting this thing running, I have finally thrown in the towel and instead will get a second (used) Zen Sleek Photo. Here are the problems:
1. Zune is incompatible with Windows Media Player (WMP).
Are you kidding me? Microsoft (MS) has spent the last 10 years coaxing consumers to use WMP, and now they sell an MP3 player that is incompatible with it? ASSININE.
Instead, you have to use Zune software, reestablish your library and playlists. Yes, there are hacks/workarounds that will let you use WMP instead, but be ready to invest some time in them.
2. Zune will not play songs protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM).
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The 883 songs I BOUGHT AND PAID FOR from Microsoft’s own MSN Music, Wal-Mart, and Puretracks cannot be played on Zune? But if I got songs through a file-sharing service, those play fine? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The worst decision I ever made was buying songs from MSN and Wal-Mart.
3. Zune does not allow you to view all songs by an artist. Instead, you have to view all albums and drill down from there. Unfortunatly, unless every song on an album has exactly the same information (date, genre, style, etc.), the songs will be split and shown on two different (but identically-titled) albums. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? But hey, you can get some more hackware and spend hours of your life changing the tags in all your files. That sounds like fun.
4. Zune does not allow you to make playlists on the unit. You can only make them through the Zune software.
5. Zune does not allow you to see any ‘details’ (such as the year) related to a song.
The only positives of the Zune compared to my Zen Sleek Photo is that the Zune has a large screen and very nice interface, lets you either touch or click the touchpad, and has 80 GB. However, if you have to spend countless hours of your life setting up your library all over again, and tracking down another copy of the 883 songs you legally bought (or burning them to CDs and ripping back to Zune), it’s just not worth it. Mine is being returned.