I bought a Zune (80GB) some time ago and have not been fully satisfied with its performance. I guess this is not surprising, as Zune seems to have very little backing against the mighty iPod, and Microsoft themselves even seem to half-ass their support for it, as if they don’t truly care.
On paper, it sounds ideal. And under the right circumstances, it is. It had the features I was looking for: plenty of space, a nice screen, ability to play video podcasts as well as MP3s, a competitive price, and wasn’t a friggin’ Apple product.
My problems mostly stem from the Zune Software. I hate the way the Zune is locked to the software. There’s no ability to add files directly without the magical Zune software. And the Zune software media player is okay, but has some real boneheaded problems…
- Revision3 HD content doesn’t work. This is the biggest gripe I have with the software right now. Rev3 changed their container from .mov to .mp4 and supposedly there’s some small portion of the spec that the Zune software doesn’t support. So it just fails out. To top it off, WMP11 plays the files just fine, but for whatever assinine reason, the Zune software doesn’t just use the WMP engine.
- No Equalizer.
- The progress slider is too small and doesn’t scale to the window width. This makes it very difficult to scan to a specific spot in a long video.
- The cover view is neat, but doesn’t serve any purpose. I should be able to click on albums and see their track list or information about them.
- Right-clicking doesn’t do jack most of the time. Some sort of advanced/convenient menu would be nice.
- No shortcut to skip to a certain song without being locked in the album/playlist (like ‘J’ in Winamp).
- No 4-channel support. (It would just be cool if it took the stereo audio and played it through the rear speakers as well.)
