Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

[CaptainZombie]

I've been considering buying a Zune since it launched back in November. I have been a bit hesitant due to the newness of the product. I can always wait till gen 2 releases in October/November, but that is a long time away.

For those that have bought the Zune, how has the use of player been for you? I messed around with the one that my brother has a little bit and really enjoyed the buttons and the size of the screen.

How is this with XBOX 360 connectivity? Has streaming music through the 360with this thing been working out well.

I am also taking EG's advice that I'm going to get rid of my 5 Disc Cd Changer and just use the Zune as my music player. This helps cut down on cables and components.

I'm very interested in the FM tuner and I hear that this works very well. I also tested it on my brother's Zune and it worked very well. Has anyone had issues with the FM tuner. At this point I don't care for the WiFi feature since it's not being used except for transfering music to/from other users.

I'm an former adopter of the 3G and 5G Video IPOD's. I've had a taste of the Apple product line also, but haven't been as impressed do to the lack of features that their competitors have always had. Apple not having FM builtin and their IPOD's scratching up so easily has been something I never cared for. Plus I've had a few friends where their HDD's have died out on them. Again, this can happen with any device.

I installed the Zune Software today, which I noticed it's running a version of WMP 11, which I really liked.

Again, thanks to OSUG1 for answering some questions that I had earlier.

Any negatives or positives that anyone can tell me about?

[jmw1137]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

Overall I really like it and also like the bigger screen...whenever I used my iPod it feels like the screen is too small.

The FM tuner is great, too. I like the capability of listening to radio if I want to.

Not sure there's anything I'd change about it or anything I really don't like about it.

[Spear]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

Does the Zune also allow you to listen to AM Radio? (Stupid question, but you guys keep saying FM Tuner...so maybe it only has FM?)

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

Does the Zune also allow you to listen to AM Radio? (Stupid question, but you guys keep saying FM Tuner...so maybe it only has FM?)

Right now, none of the MP3 players are able to broadcast AM radio for some reason that I can't remember. Someone was telling me that it may never happen, but things could change down the road.

[cbgatorade0202]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

I like it and enjoy it, Not many impressions tho I can give

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

I like it and enjoy it, Not many impressions tho I can give

Any positives or negatives?

[mudtiger]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

For those that have bought the Zune, how has the use of player been for you? I messed around with the one that my brother has a little bit and really enjoyed the buttons and the size of the screen.

I've had my zune for a month+ now and it has some +'s and -'s. Overall, I love the player itself. It looks great, has a great screen, the menu is easy to navigate, with a good pair of headphones the sound is very good, and it's not an ipod (I plain just don't like ipods).

My major negative so far is the software on the pc for syncing the player.

How is this with XBOX 360 connectivity? Has streaming music through the 360with this thing been working out well.

It works great except if you do a shuffle all, you only get 100 songs to play.

I am also taking EG's advice that I'm going to get rid of my 5 Disc Cd Changer and just use the Zune as my music player. This helps cut down on cables and components.

I'm very interested in the FM tuner and I hear that this works very well. I also tested it on my brother's Zune and it worked very well. Has anyone had issues with the FM tuner. At this point I don't care for the WiFi feature since it's not being used except for transfering music to/from other users.

I was surprised at how well the fm tuner works. I don't listen to that much fm radio, but the sound quality is tops and it picks up any ota data the station is transmitting so you might see the song title and artist scroll on the screen or the stations call sign/tag line.

The wifi meant nothing to me either. It was one of those things that I hope they do something more with in the future with firmware updates, but I don't care one bit about sharing songs with someone else so it was not a factor in my decision to buy.

I'm an former adopter of the 3G and 5G Video IPOD's. I've had a taste of the Apple product line also, but haven't been as impressed do to the lack of features that their competitors have always had. Apple not having FM builtin and their IPOD's scratching up so easily has been something I never cared for. Plus I've had a few friends where their HDD's have died out on them. Again, this can happen with any device.

My previous player was a creative zen so this was a giant leap forward in functionality and quality.

I got a speck tough skin case for my zune. I highly recommend it. It's sort of a rubberized case with a plastic screen protector. No scratches for me.

I installed the Zune Software today, which I noticed it's running a version of WMP 11, which I really liked.

Again, thanks to OSUG1 for answering some questions that I had earlier.

Any negatives or positives that anyone can tell me about?

Back to my one negative, the software. Syncing can be done automatically or manually. Automatically is a pain unless you keep a copy of the songs you transfer over to the zune on the pc. If you don't keep a copy on the pc, the zune will try and delete those songs off itself every time you sync (which if you leave it on automatic sync is everytime you connect to the pc).

So I switched to manual sync where you have to drag songs to a list to sync. This way the zune doesn't try and keep the pc and zune library matching so it won't auto delete things off itself. But on manual you give up some of the nicer playlist functionality. If you make a lot of playlists like "4+ star songs" or "songs that haven't been played in 7 days", it becomes a pain because those lists won't auto update. You have to re-drag them over to the zune anytime you want them to update.

With automatic sync, those playlists stay up to date. So you win some and you lose some. Another issue is when syncing, the zune likes to sometimes sync over multiple copies of the same song. The way to fix this is to go over the tag information for songs within an album. Make sure the artist info is the same for every song within an album. For about a week or two until I figured out the quirks of the software, I was deleting double copies of songs left and right.

Oh, and my last gripe is that you can't edit a song's info on the zune player. You have to edit it in your pc library. If you have auto sync, it should update the zune. If you have manual, you have to delete the song off the zune, then sync the altered pc song to the zune. If you don't delete it off the zune first, you usually get 2 copies of the song.

If you do get a zune, my number one piece of advice is before you connect it is go over your music library in the zune software and get all of the tag information correct and artist names matching on all songs within an album. It will save you quite a bit of trouble.

Once you figure out the software quirks though, it's not that bad, just somewhat annoying sometimes. Hopefully firmware/software updates can help with some of these issues. When you finally get your library over to the zune and it's sorted right, the player itself is fantastic.

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

I've had my zune for a month+ now and it has some +'s and -'s. Overall, I love the player itself. It looks great, has a great screen, the menu is easy to navigate, with a good pair of headphones the sound is very good, and it's not an ipod (I plain just don't like ipods).

My major negative so far is the software on the pc for syncing the player.

It works great except if you do a shuffle all, you only get 100 songs to play.

I was surprised at how well the fm tuner works. I don't listen to that much fm radio, but the sound quality is tops and it picks up any ota data the station is transmitting so you might see the song title and artist scroll on the screen or the stations call sign/tag line.

The wifi meant nothing to me either. It was one of those things that I hope they do something more with in the future with firmware updates, but I don't care one bit about sharing songs with someone else so it was not a factor in my decision to buy.

My previous player was a creative zen so this was a giant leap forward in functionality and quality.

I got a speck tough skin case for my zune. I highly recommend it. It's sort of a rubberized case with a plastic screen protector. No scratches for me.

Back to my one negative, the software. Syncing can be done automatically or manually. Automatically is a pain unless you keep a copy of the songs you transfer over to the zune on the pc. If you don't keep a copy on the pc, the zune will try and delete those songs off itself every time you sync (which if you leave it on automatic sync is everytime you connect to the pc).

So I switched to manual sync where you have to drag songs to a list to sync. This way the zune doesn't try and keep the pc and zune library matching so it won't auto delete things off itself. But on manual you give up some of the nicer playlist functionality. If you make a lot of playlists like "4+ star songs" or "songs that haven't been played in 7 days", it becomes a pain because those lists won't auto update. You have to re-drag them over to the zune anytime you want them to update.

With automatic sync, those playlists stay up to date. So you win some and you lose some. Another issue is when syncing, the zune likes to sometimes sync over multiple copies of the same song. The way to fix this is to go over the tag information for songs within an album. Make sure the artist info is the same for every song within an album. For about a week or two until I figured out the quirks of the software, I was deleting double copies of songs left and right.

Oh, and my last gripe is that you can't edit a song's info on the zune player. You have to edit it in your pc library. If you have auto sync, it should update the zune. If you have manual, you have to delete the song off the zune, then sync the altered pc song to the zune. If you don't delete it off the zune first, you usually get 2 copies of the song.

If you do get a zune, my number one piece of advice is before you connect it is go over your music library in the zune software and get all of the tag information correct and artist names matching on all songs within an album. It will save you quite a bit of trouble.

Once you figure out the software quirks though, it's not that bad, just somewhat annoying sometimes. Hopefully firmware/software updates can help with some of these issues. When you finally get your library over to the zune and it's sorted right, the player itself is fantastic.

WOW! Mud, thanks dude for all this information. It will come handy when I get one this weekend.

I was a former IPOD owner twice with 2 different generations and there were things that I couldn't stand. With no real competition, the IPOD hasn't evolved much like it should have. Granted this year they will be coming out with a rumored touch screen, what will the costs be for that feature alone? Look at their iPhone, $499 and $599 respectively for touch screen like features and only 4GB and 8GB worth of storage space.

One issue that I had at times with the IPOD and that was with both was the darn lockups. There were times that it took me awhile to get the system out of lockup mode. ARGH!!!!!!!! I've had a few friends go through several IPOD's due to HDD failure also which drove them nuts.

[mudtiger]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

No problem, I had a lot of time on my hands on friday

No lockups so far with mine, but it's only been a month or two.

Another suggestion regarding the zune software is to turn retrieve info from the internet automatically to only fill in missing info. If you leave it on overwrite, it will constantly change any edits you make tag info.

Once you get the software setup how you want it and get your music/videos/pictures on the zune, you'll love it. One last tip You can turn the zune off (instead of putting it to sleep where it still drains the batteries) by holding down arrow and the back button for about 3-5 seconds.

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

I've had my zune for a month+ now and it has some +'s and -'s. Overall, I love the player itself. It looks great, has a great screen, the menu is easy to navigate, with a good pair of headphones the sound is very good, and it's not an ipod (I plain just don't like ipods).

My major negative so far is the software on the pc for syncing the player.

It works great except if you do a shuffle all, you only get 100 songs to play.

I was surprised at how well the fm tuner works. I don't listen to that much fm radio, but the sound quality is tops and it picks up any ota data the station is transmitting so you might see the song title and artist scroll on the screen or the stations call sign/tag line.

The wifi meant nothing to me either. It was one of those things that I hope they do something more with in the future with firmware updates, but I don't care one bit about sharing songs with someone else so it was not a factor in my decision to buy.

My previous player was a creative zen so this was a giant leap forward in functionality and quality.

I got a speck tough skin case for my zune. I highly recommend it. It's sort of a rubberized case with a plastic screen protector. No scratches for me.

Back to my one negative, the software. Syncing can be done automatically or manually. Automatically is a pain unless you keep a copy of the songs you transfer over to the zune on the pc. If you don't keep a copy on the pc, the zune will try and delete those songs off itself every time you sync (which if you leave it on automatic sync is everytime you connect to the pc).

So I switched to manual sync where you have to drag songs to a list to sync. This way the zune doesn't try and keep the pc and zune library matching so it won't auto delete things off itself. But on manual you give up some of the nicer playlist functionality. If you make a lot of playlists like "4+ star songs" or "songs that haven't been played in 7 days", it becomes a pain because those lists won't auto update. You have to re-drag them over to the zune anytime you want them to update.

If you do get a zune, my number one piece of advice is before you connect it is go over your music library in the zune software and get all of the tag information correct and artist names matching on all songs within an album. It will save you quite a bit of trouble.

Once you figure out the software quirks though, it's not that bad, just somewhat annoying sometimes. Hopefully firmware/software updates can help with some of these issues. When you finally get your library over to the zune and it's sorted right, the player itself is fantastic.

After 2 months of owning the Zune, I can agree with your positives and negatives. The negatives can get to the point of frustration at times. The negatives aren't with the music player itself, its the darn software and firmware that Microsoft really needs to iron out. The software has to be some of the worst that I have used and they really need to do some reworking of the software.

For one, getting the Zune player connected to a Windows VISTA based computer is a royal pain. It took me over an hour trying to get it to run to no avail. Then I had to call MS support which took almost 1.5 hours to get this thing running properly due to settings with VISTA itself.

Syncing sucks if you ask me like you mentioned. I hate that I can't have songs burned on my HDD on one PC and then on another PC and trying to sync up off of both can be a pain as it wants to delete my songs on the Zune and then overwrite based off of the other PC. The manual dragging is another pain in the ***.

With automatic sync, those playlists stay up to date. So you win some and you lose some. Another issue is when syncing, the zune likes to sometimes sync over multiple copies of the same song. The way to fix this is to go over the tag information for songs within an album. Make sure the artist info is the same for every song within an album. For about a week or two until I figured out the quirks of the software, I was deleting double copies of songs left and right.

Oh, and my last gripe is that you can't edit a song's info on the zune player. You have to edit it in your pc library. If you have auto sync, it should update the zune. If you have manual, you have to delete the song off the zune, then sync the altered pc song to the zune. If you don't delete it off the zune first, you usually get 2 copies of the song.

I hate that multiple syncing of the same song.

Its one thing not being able to edit the song's info on the Zune, but worse is that when trying to change the file structure can be a pain in the *** within the software itself. I had to go into the actual root directory of where all of my mp3's are ripped at and I have to go into my root structure to make changes at times as the software won't allow me to make too many changes.

Besides the software issues, I really like the player and think that MS did a good job with the player itself even though that they licensed the internal guts from Toshiba. I hope that new software/firmware is released soon to upgrade this player.

[JohnnytheSkin]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

Does anyone know if you can "re-sync" your Zune? I bought my wife one last fall, ripped all the music from our PC to the unit, and then a month or so back I got a virus and had to reformat.

Now, when I hook up her Zune I can either rip the little music I do have on the PC (rebuilding a collection is tough and time consuming) and thus overwrite everything already on there, or do NOTHING, even though there are songs on my PC now that she doesn't have...even though it's the same PC (new IP since we moved, but still).

HELP!

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

Does anyone know if you can "re-sync" your Zune? I bought my wife one last fall, ripped all the music from our PC to the unit, and then a month or so back I got a virus and had to reformat.

Now, when I hook up her Zune I can either rip the little music I do have on the PC (rebuilding a collection is tough and time consuming) and thus overwrite everything already on there, or do NOTHING, even though there are songs on my PC now that she doesn't have...even though it's the same PC (new IP since we moved, but still).

HELP!

This is the one thing that pisses me off about the Zune software.

If you resync your Zune with the PC, then it should add whatever tunes are on that PC that were not added to the Zune. Is that the only PC that you guys have been using for the Zune?

The last 3 weeks I've been slowly burning 5-6 cd's a night on to my external HDD so I can build my digital library just incase I have to replace this Zune, then I won't have to reburn them darn discs again. Like you said Johnny, it becomes very time consuming.

[ExtremeGamer]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

Isn't this thing dead yet? seriously. Buddies of mine say they can't give them away at Best Buy's. Just too expensive compared to the iPod.

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

Isn't this thing dead yet? seriously. Buddies of mine say they can't give them away at Best Buy's. Just too expensive compared to the iPod.

Their the same price, not too sure where their expensive compared to the IPOd. The player itself is good, its just that the software needs tons of work.

Another issue that I have, is that if I plug in my Zune to the computer.......I can't listen to songs directly through player itself while hooked up to the software. I need to create a playlist and transfer the songs I want to listen. Totally *** backwards if you ask me, Itunes is much, much better. Let's hope that the next version of the Zune software is better and it arrives soon.

I waited 2 months to really give any feedback after giving this thing a bit of time.

But a friend of mine was saying that their not selling well at all. If no new software is released within the next few months, then I'll really have to reconsider this purchase.

[OSUG1]

Re: Microsoft Zune........Impressions After 4 months?

Does anyone know if you can "re-sync" your Zune? I bought my wife one last fall, ripped all the music from our PC to the unit, and then a month or so back I got a virus and had to reformat.

Now, when I hook up her Zune I can either rip the little music I do have on the PC (rebuilding a collection is tough and time consuming) and thus overwrite everything already on there, or do NOTHING, even though there are songs on my PC now that she doesn't have...even though it's the same PC (new IP since we moved, but still).

HELP!

Try this for the reverse sync

http://www.zunescene.com/zune-2.0-details/

Zune 2.0 and a smaller flash based Zune will be sold this year. He would not tell me the marketing names but referred to them as the big one and little one. The hard drive version looks like the generation 1 Zune, but is thinner. It has a larger hard drive and still uses the doubleshot. The flash based player he said is about "3 by 1 1/4 by 1/4 inches" in size. It is video capable and he said the screen covers about 75% of the front, similar to the hard drive Zune. The flash player has Wi-Fi and also uses a double shot. We discussed colors, he said there were several but did not disclose them. He had some interesting points about the clamshells saying that they can't be opened easily like the current Zune. Both devices have completed the design phase, although some last minute minor tweaks to the hardware will occur. When I asked about memory capacity he said "you have to beat the competition you know" he also said the flash memory fills the smaller device from top to bottom. Surprisingly he gave some hard numbers: 2.4 million next gen Zunes will be fabricated prior the 2007 holiday season. About 2/3 of them are the smaller flash units. " A new building is currently under construction in Dao Min China, next to the one that makes the XBOX 360" he said. In Zune Scene's opinion, based on that statement, it appears the Zune 2.0 will not be another Toshiba Gigabeat based device.