As pointed out by Rock4christ recently in the forums , SOApitstop has some tips for speeding up the zune software by removing some of the.. well pointless flashy effects. To do this you create a shortcut for the zune software, and edit the property's of the shortcut(by adding extra info to the command line).

Some of the effects can be caused by these phrases:

  • -animations:(true|false) Enable or disable fading effects.
  • -gdi Use GDI instead of DirectX, seems to disable animations and probably give some legacy support. This is mentioned in the Zune 2.3 release notes.
  • -switchtogdi Permanently switch to GDI rendering. makes registry entry change in general settings: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Zune\GeneralSettings\UseGDI=1
  • -dx9 Use DirectX9 compatibility? Probably.
  • -direction:(rtl|ltr) Use Right-to-Left rendering for languages that require it.

So, if you value speed over effects, then some of these could help you out.