Here's a take fromt he Baltimore Sun... I love this quote. Click on the link below and read this one, it's a good read for sure.

Despite my gripes, its form and function should make the second-generation Zune a strong contender in the portable media player market.

Source: baltimoresun.com

You gotta head over to Media Buyer Planner to read more, but Zune faired pretty nice during the biggest shopping week this year...

The Microsoft Zune made its debut among the top 10 searches this past week, coming as the fifth most-searched for product.

I don't know why, but a 2 week old article on Yahoo got slashedotted today.

"Yahoo Tech is reporting that the Microsoft Zune, having been heavily discounted for the holiday season, 'is currently Amazon's top-selling music player, beating out the new iPod Nano and the 80GB iPod on the 'Bestsellers in Electronics' list.' An Associated Press report even indicates that the Zune's newfound popularity has left it in short supply, sold out in many locations. Is this a sign that a true competitor, from Microsoft no less, has finally broken into the Apple-dominated MP3 player market? And will this spell more success for Windows-media based music subscription services like Napster?"

The comments to follow are filled of Zune peltings and folks wondering why someone would say Zune was #1 at Amazon when it's not anymore. In fact it only was for a couple days.

Anyhow, I replied with my take... I had to.

1st off read the date of the article. The fact is that there was a point recently where the "heavily discounted" Zune 30 players were #1 on that Amazon list.

(more...)

Latest Zune a solid MP3, but don't trash your iPod yet

Advantages: Larger hard drive than older version -- 80 gigabytes, up from 30; larger 3.2-inch glass screen; touchpad button, replacing the button-within-a-button controller

Disadvantages: Grid of pixels on screen sometimes distractingly visible; communicates only with PCs; won't play copy-protected music purchased on iTunes.

The Morning Call

Microsoft's new Zune 2.0 finally confident playing in iPod's league

Don't look now, but Microsoft might finally be getting the hang of hardware.
Microsoft's new, second-generation Zune music/photo/video player is a pleasure to use. It fixes a long list of things that made the original Zune such a pathetic wannabe. Best of all, the new Zune is starting to develop its own identity.

Orlando Sentinal (by David Pogue)

The 2nd story is a surprising story because of the writer. Pogue has been a habitual Windows Mobile basher and he wasn't too pleased with Microsoft's Gen 1 Zune.

Being in the the tech site community for a couple years, I know that getting your opinions heard is easy said than done. While the size of Aximsite / Mobilitysite's readership is pretty damn big, they have nothing on Crunchgear, so it's great to see a regular commentor and GotZune Blogger get some Crunchgear love today.

Jaxim got his Blind Review linked to from Crunchgear's main page today. Great Job sir.

I don’t own one of the new Zunes that just came out this past month, but my friend allowed me to test his out pretty thoroughly and I was able to ask him what he didn’t like about it.

I must say I really enjoyed it. However there are a “few� things that I thought were lacking with the device. Despite these deficiencies I would still purchase it over an iPod classic. Read on…

read the rest here...

Note: This is his big chance at a Zune 80 too. Head over and help him win a Zune 80!

Tell the world about your review and have your friends comment, vote, and generally create a ruckus. Sometimes friends are slow and don’t know how to vote. Those friends can leave comments.

Zune and Sandisk doing well...

He doesn't really like the "Squirtle" or whatever they were calling it, but he gives his review of the Flash Zune. Someone forgot to tell him it's called the Zunepad. He also talked about the wireless sync has to be wired anyway myth.

[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/aolradio.podcast.aol.com/twit/DGW-452.mp3]

Check it out here. Thanks Wetworker.

Top Search Terms for Today. These are the top keywords that got people to GotZune. Why do I post it? Line 2. Line 6, and Line 10. We need more cases for the 80 and we need Microsoft to fix the software the way people are requesting. That's a lot of folks looking to downgrade. Not good.

• gotzune (‎117)
• zune 80 case (‎88)
• got zune (‎81)
• zune 80 availability (‎62)
• GotZune.com (‎56)
• Zune 80 Review (‎55)
• downgrade zune firmware (‎55)
• zune 80 vs ipod (‎51)
• Altec Lansing iM414 Speaker Dock (‎45)
• zune 80 cases (‎43)

Talk more about the device you are reviewing that what you are comparing it to in your mind...

The first-generation Zune media player that Microsoft Corp. released last year was a me-too product with a few nice touches. So the question with the new, second-generation Zune is whether Microsoft is ready to surpass its competition, most notably Apple Inc. and its iPods.

In a word, the answer is no. The 8GB flash memory, Wi-Fi-enabled Zune I reviewed is quite a decent media player. Microsoft obviously worked hard to get it to compare favorably to the iPod Nano, and it does do that, but only if you compare this second-generation Zune to the previous-generation iPod Nano.

In other words, this is the Zune Microsoft should have introduced last year. The new Zune is well executed and has a notably intuitive user interface, but it's not particularly compelling when compared with the new iPod Nano and some of Zune's other competitors.

If you can wade through the ads on the site and find the content, here is the link.

A buddy of mine, Kevin Tofel, from JKontheRun posted a link to a bit from Craig Pringle. Apparently, there are issues with the audio from the HD channels Craig is using to grab media for his Zune.

As it turns out none of my recorded TV had audio.  I did some investigating and found that this was because all of my recorded TV was recorded from HD channels.  It is not that the Zune does not support HD, per se, but it does not support Dolby Digital audio that inherent in the HD stream. - Craig Pringle

Apparently, the Dolby Digital audio streams aren't yet supported so only his standard definition programming had audio playback. Hopefully, this gets researched or resolved since part of the "HD experience" is the high quality sound that goes with the video. While I don't expect the Zune to support 5.1 surround sound, I'd happily take a standard stereo track for video in my pocket. - JKontheRun

Sources: JKontheRun and Craig Pringle