Zune round-up: unboxing gallery, leaked units locked 'till launch, and customizable casing rumors
By Conrad Quilty-Harper 
posted November 10th 2007 5:10PM
posted November 10th 2007 5:10PM
There's also rumors that Microsoft is planning to enable online purchasers of the Zune 80 to choose different case colors and four lines of text engraving. That's unconfirmed for now, but pretty good news if true. Microsoft kinda messed up the coloring deal last time around. Also, and straight from the horse's mouth, comes the news that the Zune's software won't require you to delete all your music if you want to sync to a second computer. How nice of them.
Read - Zune 80 customizable casing? (ZuneScene) [Thanks, Kevin P. and Michael]
Read - Zune v2 features rundown (ZuneBoards) [Thanks, Mike]
Read - $25 gift card with Zune purchase [Thanks, Ryan]
[Thanks to Ed S. for the unboxing photos]
Jeff:
The story is so fake that apple posted it on their website:
http://www.apple.com/support/windowsvirus/
Wow, that link Silverton45 just posted was pretty surprising.
I mean, it's not the virus or the iPod that's surprising.
It's the fact that Apple promoted the Live OneCare scanner, a Microsoft product, as a way of getting rid of the viruses and other stuff on users' systems. I mean, really, that's surprising Apple did that.
I love Live OneCare (ease-of-use, does many functions well, PC hub monitor, etc.), and I'm quite surprised Apple would promote that on their own site. Quite a surprise.
What the hell? I thought this was about the Zune, not the iPod.
Hey Michael,
Good eye, I didn't even catch that. It is surprising that Apple would promote a MS product.
Hi, welcome to 1.5 years ago. Great reading comprehension skills there as well, chief. "Less than 1% after September 1, 2006"..hmm. That's a very small number, no?
... you never had to delete all your music to sync your zune with another computer before either. I synced mine with my girlfriend's computer lots of times, you just say you want to detect it as a guest and it lets you transfer whatever you want to and from it without needed to delete it or any problems... Seriously, where do you people get this stuff?
Its engadget. Ryan and his lil b!tch buddies are a bunch bay area iTards masquerading as Journo's. I can't stand MSFT but the level intellectual dishonesty about that company compared to any iTurd out cupertino is downright sickening.
They're 1/2 right.
If you want to do manual synching - you can use any PC. If you want to do automatic synching, then you have to pick one.
That's why the first screen you get when you synch on a different PC is the choice of 'Connect this Zune as a guest.' or 'Sync with your library on this PC. Remove all the content on your Zune and replace it with the content in this library instead.'
To be fair, Ryan and Co have been pretty even handed about the Zune rollout and news. If we're going to rag on them for over hyping the iPod and iPhone, we should thank them when they play up the Zune a bit, no? Fair's fair.
Looks sexy. I cant wait to get one. The fact that the fanboi are already queefing is a good sign.
i thought the headphones were suppose to be premium earphones. was i wrong or is it only with the zune 80?
premium earphones will come only with the Zune 80. But you can buy them seperately too.
I'm still seeing "welcome to the social"
We live in a scary time when PMP's need to be unlocked or activated to work.
ekdroid @ Nov 11th 2007 7:16AM
it's only right that we get permission from Microsoft.
XP and Vista, too.
They can take my IP address, brand preferences, music preferences and more, so they can tailor content to suit me! I give it all for free because I trust them. They r a reputable company.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201806263
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16455.html
HOT player! I am getting a red Nano for Xmas and cannot wait.
However, if MSFT releases a white 80G player, it's MINE :)
well i will be canceling my pre-order from Amazon. if i can get the color i want im willing to wait until a web-site goes up to order it.
The poor person's iPod. Why anyone would want these after using an iPod or iPod touch, I do not know. Especially the iPod touch. WiFi. You can actually go on the internet. You can IM, you can.......do stuff.
Microsoft missed it, again.
iPod Touch however does NOT have an 80GB HDD.. and Zune 80 has a better video out than the classic.
"You can actually go on the internet. You can IM, you can.......do stuff."
Dude, give it up. You might as well be saying "Why not buy a Macbook Pro, it lets you listen to music, has a much bigger screen, and lets you do so much more", and your question would be equally as insepid and clueless. They AREN'T the same product category. You are right, the iPod touch does all of those things, that the Zune does not, at a $150 premium for 20% of the capacity. The iPod touch is NOT primarily a media player; that is not its selling characteristic. It is a web pad that has media capability. The zune, however, is a media player, and the people who buy the Zune are doing so because guess what, that happens to be what they actually want. Of the two, only one lets you select new music while driving without a high risk of rear ending someone, and it isn't the device with a touch screen.
Apple realizes that. That's why they still sell the classic and nano. It also probably has something to do with the fact that those two SKUs sell orders of magnitude more hardware than the touch does. Oddly I didn't see you trolling the comment threads of those products.
I know MS can't talk about future plans, but I would probably get a Zune, if the next release includes voice and radio recording. This is pretty much a basic feature for me, and I don't get the reason they don't include it. Really cheap devices have done this for years.
Secondly, they need a mid-release firmware upgrade. X-Box does it and everyone looks forward to it and appreciates it. The Zune is new enough that they have plenty of stuff to add between product releases and still have something new for the new players. For instance, they can add a clock sometime before next year's versions comes out.
Another feature request. Segregate content intelligently. I have no problem with the play restrictions on DRM'd content that's been shared. But if something, like a Podcast, is available freely, the device should be intelligent enough to know this and allow it through without play restrictions. That'd be an awesome firmware upgrade.
Ooh, I want one bad...
So has anyone heard if these things are finally gonna support gapless playback? That's the only thing stopping me from getting one of these things.
yes they will support gapless natively.
it's only right that we get permission from Microsoft.
XP and Vista, too.
They can take my IP address, brand preferences, music preferences and more, so they can tailor content to suit me! I give it all for free because I trust them. They r a reputable company.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201806263
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16455.html
@neon
What is your source on the 'native gapless' support? Everything I've read has pointed to there being NO gapless playback support. If I'm wrong then I'll be buying a Zune80 and getting rid of my Gigabeat S30 immediately.
Actually it supports WMA lossless.
http://www.zuneboards.com/content/view/162/1/
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/zune/more-zune-2-details-lossless-support-glass-screens-green-is-the-new-brown-306648.php
@neon
Not sure that WMA Lossless = gapless playback. I'll do a little research . . my S30 supports WMA lossless, so I'll rip one of my cds that has gapless song transfers and see if that does it.
But I don't think I'm going to see any difference.
yeah, let me know then. maybe i'm wrong...
You SOUND like you're from PRC (People's Republic of Crack)
posted in the wrong location. this was a reply to Jose on page one =/
I don't know what you guys are looking at. These players look like crap. They look like any other Chinese player copycats. Its not even close ...are you guys Microsoft shills?
AHAHAHAHAHA Microsoft shills? ENGADGET? You've got to be kidding me. You know you're an Apple iBoy when you're complaining about Engadget being Microsoft shills!
I am just disappointed about the Zune still not offering support for Asian characters... just English, French, Spanish...wtf?
The weird thing is - it DID support Japanese in the first firmware - the one that got blow away with the version that supported WiFi.
I had a Japanese track on my Zune and after the upgrade, it just showed a bunch of rectangles - which means they replaced the full Unicode font with a smaller one.
no way man, my Zune 30 never displayed any Chinese or Japanese characters, just those boxes. And still doesn't.
Then there was a rumor that the new Zune software would display the character on the Zune, if your windows machine already had the East Asian Languages installed.
shiet this is wack, there are more people speaking chinese in the world than english, french and spanish combined.
Perhaps you should do just the tiniest bit of research before you post something. Chinese speakers - 1.3 billion, English speakers - 1.8 billion, Spanish speakers - .4-.5 billion and French speakers - .11-.5 billion (this includes native and 2nd language speakers and rolls Mandarin and all the other Chinese dialects into a single group). While the sheer number of people in China is impressive, English is still the most widely spoken language in the world. Also, it will become more so because the Chinese government wants all of it's people to speak English in addition to Mandarin and/or their native dialect.
Think before you post.
I'm debating between this and the creative. Tough call but I'm swaying towards the Zune.
Awesome! I can't wait to get one!
Hey do you guys have any idea when it'll be available in Asia?
I'd recommend getting a player from a company that has no vested interest in pushing you to buy their content (ie. companies that produce players only). Both Apple and Microsoft lock you into using their software and use the player primarily to drive sales for their online music. They very grudgingly provide support for other video and audio codecs. Believe me if they could sell these without support for MP3 they would! I have players from Apple, Creative & Microsoft (I develop software for MP3 players), so don't have any particular bias. However I would rate the Zune the lowest overall of those 3 companies' products. The Creative players have much broader format support (including DivX) and better quality audio. The Apple players have more compact hardware (economies of scale allow this) and a simpler UI (at the cost of features). The best that can be said for the Microsoft Zunes is that the menus are pretty. They lack both features and format support. And forget about using them on anything other than Windows (XP SP2 & Vista) with their software installed. They are very well locked down and not enough 'hackers' care about the device. In a year since it's release no-one has managed to crack the USB protocol. So no Linux and no Mac OSX for the Zune.
My 0.02
PS. WTF with the comment system on this site? Could it be more flakey?
You mean the new iMac look cheap as well...
Wrong post (see page 1 comment)
The link, is to download the software for the Zune, as it doesn't come with the Zune, which is just stupid.
The iPod is the same, isnt it? What they should have done is include the software right on the player. It installs when you plug it in. Then again, a non-internet connected user now-a-days is few and far between.
Can't speak for the new Zunes, but the old one comes with a CD containing the software. The new iPod classic and touch do not come with a CD and hence the software (iTunes) must be downloaded. At least in the case of the classic, I would have like to have seen iTunes on the iPod's disk, so it didn't need to be downloaded. In the case of the touch (or Zune) this is not possible (no 'disk mode').
What I would like to see is the Zune hardware recognised out of the box by Vista. It isn't. Also, as the Zune software is a repackaged version of Windows Media Player (and Windows Media Player can apparently be hacked to sync with the Zune), I'd like to see the Zune software done away with and its functionality integrated into Windows Media Player. That would make it more or less equivalent (from a user experience) to OSX + iTunes.
Ironically (as historically its software was the worst), the Creative Zens with MTP (all of the models released in the last few years) give the most seamless experience under recent versions of Windows. No additional software or drivers necessary. Plug it in and go...
What is better: a new zune 4/8 GB or a new ipod nano? They have the same price and capacity.
Feature-wise, they're similar, except:
Zune has FM radio and WiFi syncing.
iPod nano has disk mode.
Zune is Windows only and has no 3rd party syncing software.
Zune flash has no TV-out.
Well, I was just in a Best Buy and they had them on display in their MP3 player section. I thought that it was weird. I like the new touch button interface. I was all expecting it to be IPod-ish, but was pleasantly surprised when it acted like the touchpad on my laptop.
Ahem....
Someone *please* Jailbreak these mofos so that they can work on a Mac!
:D