Adam over at Zune Thoughts has written a really nice commentary about adding features to the Zune. The best feature he's like to see is NOT ADDING FEATURES. I agree 100%, I don't want to play games or schedule appointments on my Zune. I use my At&t Tilt for that.

Grahm Skee at AnythingButiPod has a great write-up on the problems faced with trying to be too many things at once. The iPod began as a great Portable Music Player (PMP) that was good at playing music and little else. As users demanded pictures and video, the iPod adapted to provide those features. The problem is, Apple hasn't really updated the way users interact with their music since the second or third generation. They became too afraid to disenfranchise users, and, in a decidedly un-Apple fashion, made their software and firmware bloated and devoid of any significant advances.

Most of the reviews I've read about the Gen2 Marketplace have pointed to its simple design as an advantage over iTunes. PC Magazine's Tim Gideon, in his review of the Zune80 praised the Marketplace and software as making iTunes "seem like a big, boring spreadsheet". Gideon gave the 80 PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award.

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Here are the results so far in the WSJ's "Which of these electronics are you most likely to buy as a gift?" Poll.

Don't expect us asking for votes on our sites and blogs to get the Zune into 2nd or 3rd place on this Wall Street Journal Poll, let alone over take iPod/iPhone in the results. Why? Several reasons...

1. This is Uncle Walt's World, the Wall Street Journal. The most prolific reviewer of tech, Walt Mossberg, calls the WSJ Home. Walt is the biggest Apple homer out there though. Of course most of his readership has fallen into the iPod/iPhone cult with Walt.
2. Face it, the iPod and iPhone are really good devices. Despite our love for the Zune, you have to really step back and take the blinders off and realize that a) Apples been in the MP3 Player business for a long time. They are very solid devices. I love Zune. I want Zune to succeed. I own more than 8 Zunes now, but I also have more than 8 iPods too, including the iPhone. They are good products. Zune is good too, but has work to be done to get any marketshare from Apple.
3. It's cool to own an iPod. Ask my daughter. I was apple to pry her 4gb nano out of her possession only with the offer to pay for her Zune Pass if she takes the 4gb Pink Zune I got her.

Even though we won't make a dent, even if all Zune sites got every reader to vote, I still urge you to hop over and vote Zune anyway.

Source: ClicZune

So, I have 1000's of songs on my Zune 80 and guess what it does from 8am to 5pm... It's a radio. I have just come to the realization that all I am using the Zune for at work is as a radio. I have some pretty nice powered desktop speakers on my desk. I just jack in and tune in to Sports Talk! We are fortunate enough to have an FM sports radio station. All this music and functionality and I use it as a radio at work. Funny.

Previous to the Zune 80, I used a Sansa Connect at work to stream Yahoo Music Stations. I used the Zune 30 at home docked and a/v out jack to an older powered subwoofer 3 speaker desktop setup. I use my iPod 30g Video for cutting the grass. My iPhone sits there charging waiting for some accessory to review with it. The rest of my players sit in the graveyard waiting for a photo opportunity with a newer device.

How do you use your Zune?

As expected, nobody can review the Zune without constant references to Microsoft "borrowing" ideas from Apple, but despite this reviewers apparenent bias towards Apple, this review is pretty fair...

In spite of these factors, the new flash Zune is a pleasant surprise and genuinely benefits from most of Microsoft's development efforts over the past year, even if some of them are clearly reactions to Apple's designs. At least in black, the new Zune is attractive, durable, and finally easy to use in both hardware and software. It is also second only to Apple in terms of podcast management; this is one of the few players outside of the iPod line that I can recommend to Windows users who virtually depend on podcasts to get through work or a commute.

There are clear areas where Microsoft could have improved the design: a better screen, better battery life, stronger wireless features, and a few minor interface changes would have helped the device fare better against the newest iPod generation. With these in mind, however, the new flash Zunes (and to some extent, the Zune 80) have made giant strides compared to the Zune 30 and are certainly more capable than many of the players that sit nearby on store shelves.

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Saturday, I was on the way out to get some things. I decided to glance at Circuit City in my town. None. I was going there anyhow... Guess what, there was 1.

Today, Wal Mart's beta inventory checker online. None in my town. I go there to get the Home A/V Kit. What do you know, they had one. I bought it. I had already bought an extra for our contest, but decided to snatch up an extra.

I am reading everywhere that they are sold out everywhere, but inventory checks on websites in areas still show them out there.

I guess low prices work. It's working for HD-DVD and it looks like it's working for Microsoft with the bargain priced Zune 30s now.

A Zune media player is the top-selling digital musical device on Amazon.com, outselling Apple. Inc.'s iPod for the No. 1 ranking.

On Monday morning, Microsoft Corp.'s heavily discounted, 30-gigabyte, $134 Zune digital media player was ranked the No. 1 bestseller in the Seattle online retailer's (NASDAQ: AMZN) list of top-selling MP3 players in the "Electronics" category.

Apple's four-gigabyte iPod nano was No. 2, followed by Apple's 80-gigabyte iPod "classic" at No. 3.

Last week, the Redmond computer giant (NASDAQ: MSFT) introduced a new 80-gigabyte Zune player, but they're hard to find. Amazon's site on Monday said they're "temporarily out of stock" and no future shipping date was listed. Microsoft's own Zune site said the 80-gigabyte player can't be ordered until "early December."

Source : Puget Sound Business Journal

Are you being left out of the social because you are from Godingaftigastan? Are you sad because Microsoft won't sell you a Zune? There are ways my friend...

You better believe it Non-USA Folks... There are ways around everything. That sneaky Canadian, Jason Dunn, shows you how...

The world is a big place, full of people who love gadgets. When a company decides to release a piece of technology in a single country rather than a world-wide release, it never stops determined people from getting the technology. Like a modern-day Robin Hood, eBay is the primary conduit for re-distributing technology marvels from the "haves" to the "have-nots" (profit for the eBay seller is the motive, however). The Zune is one such product, released only in the US of A so far. I happen to live in Canada, and can't buy the Zune in my country, or use much of the online functionality - not without a little creativity that is. Welcome to the International Zune User's Guide: everything you need to know about being one of those clandestine folks acquiring and using a Zune in a country where Microsoft doesn't officially support you.

READ THE GUIDE OVER AT ZUNE THOUGHTS

Some guy over at Zune Corps named Nathan has apparently had a seriously bad experience with Zune. He claims that he had 3 friends that bought and returned Zune 80s too. All of this because of the Zune Software "destroying" their collections.

There is one reason and one reason only. Because since tuesday night when i got home from work i have been spending almost every second on my computer (when not playing Crysis) trying to fix my music collection. I've now spent (and yes i did count) 35 HOURS on fixing my music collection because of the new zune software destroying it. Not to mention i've done the two metadata fixes 45 times each and nothing works. My music collection is still destroyed.

I just made a post over at the Zune Forums at Zune.net about how I have sync'ed 2 Flash Zunes, 1 Zune 80, and 1 Zune 30 with 2.2 on all of them with no hitches. No Album art issue, no ID3 tag screw ups, nothing. Why?

What is different? Not to play devil's advocate, but do these folks having trouble have a lot of "less than legal" content? Not claiming this, just wondering. There has to be some reason why so many are having issues, but I had none.

Anyhow, read the rant from Nathan at Zune Corps...

I know Ryan Block personally and I know that he is normally quite fair with his opinions. His initial take on Zune 2 upset me and I thought he had not given it a fair shake. I wasn't the only one, lots of folks flogged him for his assessment. He promised to give it another whirl and he did.

So as we said before: same place, same time in late 2008? Bring your A-game, Zune, and we'll be ready.

I am not surprised. This time Ryan goes through all the features with a better description of why or why not he liked the features.

Read his review here...

The less-than-enthusiastic response to the first generation of Zunes was an important learning experience.

I’m a big believer in failing fast… If we skipped last year, we would have never come out with the product we did this year… We learned that because of the shortfalls in the PC client [software], the device was less useful… People hated that there was no podcasts, that they couldn’t fill their cultural cache [the Zune] with the stuff that was meaningful to them.

We would not have added Wi-Fi sync [a feature that adds music to the Zune over a wireless network]. That’s not a very sexy feature to demo. If you are out for a run, your girl comes home and rips 5 new CDs on the PC upstairs. You come back home, dock your device and make some risotto. When you go out for a run the next day, the CDs magically appear. That’s cool. The confidence that NPR is always going to be there. That’s cool.

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