[nerys]

Overall the Zune is a horrifying device. I never had so much damned trouble getting a device to work. Its utterly insane how much effort is required to make this thing work.

I was forced (effectively) to install 2 things I swore I would NEVER install and for which MS has NO logical reason to force zune to require but do anyway. .net Framework and windows update. More crap infesting my hard drive. I lost count of how many things I had to install and update just to get this damned software working.

The software. The most horrifying experience I have ever had with a program. I can not believe I am about to say this but I finally found software WORSE than ITUNES and the winner is ZUNE SOFTWARE. I do not know how you people can deal with it. I plan to copy as much stuff to the zune as I can and hopefully NEVER run this damned program again. Sadly I bought 4 zunes (3 as gifts and 1 for me)

I hate this software so much I am getting angry as I type this. There is NO WAY to copy music to the zune. There is simply no way to do it.

I have to copy the music to the "collections"

THEN I have to copy the music to a "Playlists"

THEN I can tell it to SYNC to Zune and PREY it actually does this. GOD FREAKING HELP you if there is an error for it tells you absolutely NOTHING. it just says error. Nothing else JUST ERROR.

THEN its not truly an mp3 player. 50-70% of the crap I "sync" through the convoluted process gets "coverted" what the hell is it converting it too? and Why?

God I hate it so much. I will pay $100 to the first developer who makes 3rd party software so I can delete the zune software and just DUMP my music onto my Zune. I will pay $200 to the first dev that can make this thing Mass Storage Compliant with NO PC SIDE software needed afterwards ever on any machine (IE firmware hack)

OK Enough of the rant. Onto the good stuff.

The HARDWARE is a breath of fresh air. I LOVE the device. SO much better than an IPOD. I even think the sound quality is better.

The interface blows. same damned Database drive interface as the stinking ipod. What is with these people. Is it so hard to read and display a DIRECTORY structure. All the crap chinese mp3 players do not seem to have a problem with it.

BUT once your playing music its a DREAM. I love the giant album art The large screen is so nice. It feels good in the hand. I do not know why people say its too big. I LIKE this size. IT FITS. Feels good. does not feel like I am going to snap it in half if I breath on it wrong. Its plastic sure but it feels good. Nice texture rounded edges. It just fits. (Quid Pro quo - I have very large hands which might be why it feels good to me not many others)

I got the Woot deal (bought 4 of them) with the premium package. Damn it this thing sounds good. The sound quality is fantastic (the headphones work a little too well I can not even hear the phone rung 10 inches from my head :-)

The wifi has potential. its useless for syncing. Its so abysmally slow its worthless BUT zune to zune will be interesting once a hacker uncripples it. (stock its worthless)

A WWW interface and better a way to download MP3's direct from a website on the zune would be really cool.

RSS built into the zune would rock. IE if the zune could sink itself to RSS feeds via WIFI with no computer at all. I wake up and my podcasts are just there. Now that would be an ipod killing feature.

If I had known the software was SOO bad I might not have bought these things at all. I am glad I did not know though since I REALLY do like the zune interface (during playback) and the zune device itself. Kind of makes me desire a Zune 80 but not until its hacked.

So Here I will have to deal with the worst syncing software on planet earth and just pray some amazing programmer somewhere hacks the living crap out of this thing. Even something as simple as Red Chair style software that required NO zune software would make this thing SO MUCH more usable.

Why is the software so bad? Well I guess its a quirk of how I listen to music. I guess if all you have is solid albums its not so bad. but I do not listen by album. I listen by FOLDER. I put the music I want in a folder and I listen to that. I do not care what the album is or what the artist is or the genere or what playlist its on. I just drop that folder on an mp3 player and it just start playing.

When I drop one of these folders on the zune software it DESTROYS my folder construction and displays it by album. Problem is I might have 400 songs in a folder from 390 different albums and artists. See the problem. How the hell do I find MY STUFF and copy it.

I have to keep DELETING everything from the collection so that the ONLY songs in the list are the ones I just added. This gets tedious and NOW I just read that it might DELETE my stuff already on the zune since I removed it from collections. (this zune just might end up embedded in the nearest wall if that happens)

Its worthless for videos sadly even though the screen looks great. If I have to convert my videos its not even worth my time to try. I will just keep using my zodiac for those. It plays pretty much anything I can shove onto an SD card. Same for the podcasts.

You see let me describe the process of listening to podcasts on my zodiac.

I grab all the podcasts mp3's I want (already downloaded with Juice)
I insert the SD CARD
I drop the MP3's into the folder called "podcasting"
I insert that SD card into my zodiac. I tap Pocket Tunes. I tap OPEN I tap the podcasting folder and hit select all.
Done it start playing.

NOW let me describe the process on the Zune

First I have to move all the files via the network to the local machine (for some reason zune software will NOT sync anything on a memory card or another computer it adds it but when I hit sync it just says error error error for each song no reason no explanation just error error error)

Then I click on collections and I DROP the podcasts iniside here
THEN I have to sync it.
I open the zune and NO podcast lists. instead I get 14 podcast lists for the 14 different podcasts. What the hell? OH yeh ID3 Database Driven.

I go back to the software delete it all sync it. READD IT ALL make a playlists. THEN after adding it add it again to the playlists (there is no way to just add directly to a playlists you have to add to zune software first)

THEN I sync it again and NOW I have something approzimating a folder of podcasts.

WHY do they have to make this so difficult? What is so hard about a DRIVE LETTER with FOLDERS

MUSIC - VIDEO - PICTURES - PODCASTS

I click on zune drive letter I see 4 folders I just DUMP my folders onto whatever folders I want Music in music etc..

WHAT IS SO HARD ABOUT THIS that apple and microsoft can not understand?

Want to make USELESS annoying software that you have to spend a ton of money on FINE but why FORCE me to use it? What is so complicated or hard about drag and drop. So simple a process.

EVERY step of the way the software gets in my way and worse it too stupid to tell me what I did wrong to make it angry. And they wonder why people do not adopt this process.

SO I just hope that microsoft will not KILL such a nice device by encumbering it with this CRAP software (yeah right)

So I just have to hope some inventing user will HACK THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF THIS THING. FLAY it open. PLEASE I BEG YOU.

It such a nice piece of hardware would be a pitty to let it rot because of bad software.

Chris A new Zune Hopeful Taylor
www nerys com