Microsoft's Zune Player a Review and Reaction

Since its inception in the beginning of the 21st century, Apple's juggernaut, the iPod has ruthlessly dominated the media player industry with an iron grip, paralyzing the masses into submissive consumers. Even giants such Creative labs and Samsung have fell short of making more then a puny dent in the almost 68 million iPods sold since 2002. A glimmer of hope came when software giant and household namesake Microsoft, announced it would launch a new media player, one so powerful, it would make the iPod shake in its dock connector. Microsoft calls it the Zune, Yet as the release date of November the 13th 2006, came and went, the reviews are mixed on this so called iPod assassin. So what makes the Zune different? Does it have the credentials to step into the media player market as a formidable contender against the 10 time heavyweight champion iPod? Or will it simply get thrown away in the wash? Read on and make your own judgments.

First, An overview of the Zune:

It's a 30GB MP3 player with a photo and video friendly 3-inch screen, and it costs $249.99. It runs on a customized version of PortableMediaCenter software with an intuitive twist. It has a built in wifi controller allowing you to connect to another Zune to share files, within reason. But there are many differences both in mind and body that differentiate the Zune from any other MP3 player.

The Design:

By design the Zune is 4.3 x 2.5 x 7 inches, weighs 5.6 ounces and it holds about 12 hours of music, video and photos, gets roughly 13 hours of battery time and costs $249.99. It comes in 3 different colors, black, white and brown. (Why brown? The world may never know).

Microsoft went with the tried and true minimalist design on this one. The Zune has an interface that is certainly intuitive, its buttons are up, down, left, right and select. It has a three inch screen which is larger then a 30 gigabyte ipod's screen and it has adjustable brightness settings which allow for you to see the screen even when the backlight is turned off.

The Interface:

The main menu has what a main menu ought to have, music, video's, pictures, radio, community and settings options. A great thing about the interface is that you don't have to go back to the main menu to view album/artist info, genres and play lists, so you can have your songs or videos playing, dimmed in the background, while you call up file information. The information isn't blocked out by a large menu like in the iPod. You can download or upload your own album art to correspond with the artist and when you play a song the album art can be displayed as the background.

The Features:

It plays mp3's, Zune only Windows media files and unprotected AAC files. It cannot play Microsoft's "Play for Sure" files that online stores such as Napster and URGE services use. Meaning that buying music from Microsoft may be useless on your Microsoft player. It can automatically convert mpeg 4's and h264 files into WMV files but doesn't support the very popular Divx or XviD files so you'll have to get a 3rd party conversion software which is not a detriment if you know how to use them correctly. The photo support is limited to JPEG only and it won't convert other formats to jpeg, at least not in this version of the Zune. It does have a built in wifi receiver which allows the user to connect with other zune's and send songs which the recipient can play back three times or keep for three days, whichever happens first. Basically, if you are into subscription music, you have to get the $14.95 a month ZunePass, which currently supports more then 2 million tracks.
If you're like me and into getting all your stuff for free and am proficient with file conversion software, the limited file compatibility shouldn't pose a problem.

Overall, the Zune is a well-designed portable media device with good playback performance, a fast processor, and a superior interface. Wi-Fi sharing works splendidly, but owners ought to be fully aware of the limited file compatibility, especially for videos. No, the Zune is no iPod Assassin, more of an apprentice in training. While Microsoft's new media player foundation is certainly a strong one, they should a consumer's advice: Iron out some wrinkles, get over themselves a little bit and let the other file formats play in their digital sandbox. I look forward to seeing versions 2 and 3, if it ever makes it there.