Zune HD box spotted?
According to one tipster, the Zune HD was a no-show today at both of his Houston-area Best Buys, so hopefully this little tidbit can make it up to that loneliest of all Zune fans. According to CrazyphoneGuy of Twitter and his prodigious Twitpic account, the picture above is of the Zune HD's new box. It looks quite a bit like existing Zune boxes, but that's certainly no slight. Anyone else track down the Zune HD at a Best Buy today, or was NVIDIA just fooling with us?
[Thanks, Brayan]
[Thanks, Brayan]
























thanks for the tip... but buying from a local person is more safer
I can vouch for the other houston location--greenspoint Best Buy's MS rep never came....what's more worrisome is that NO ONE at that particular best buy location new anything about the demo except for the manager who seemed to have forgotten to tell anyone! the mp3 salesman got the MS rep's # from his manager and proceeded to call him for over an hour to figure out if he'd be late or not come at all...but the guy never answered his phone, so i gave up on the dude and left. i'm hoping someone will be at the final houston location today!!!
A week after this comes out it is going to be quite amusing to see the long lines at the Best Buy Zune HD return counter.
Let's see how many chumps fall for this Zune.
I disagree FoxKenji--people who buy this will be people who really want it. With this recession you're not gonna have people buying stuff just to try it out. I *finally* got to play with it today at the ghetto Gulfgate Best Buy and it was sick. I loved it! Not exactly an iPod Touch-killer, but very much a GIANT step in the right direction from where Zune was. The controls were slick and smooth and I have absolutely no complaints with the device!
My only complaints, period, are with Microsoft/NVIDIA's handling of the "demo" days...(see earlier post). The rep today was completely inept. The six geeks standing around watching/playing with it (myself included) knew leaps and bounds more than she did. Someone would ask a question and she'd answer with "umm, i'm not sure...I think ______" (fill in the blank with the a stupid answer). Then one of us would answer with the correct response and she was like "ohh!" It would've been great if MS had actually trained her on something. It was obvious she received the device...sorta looked through the owner's manual (sorta...) and then walked into best buy and set it up on a tv. That was it! She was definitely not there to answer questions are provide any knowledge on anything. She also admitted she didn't work for MS or NVIDIA and that she was outsourced by Microsoft. Nice. So sad...it's like MS doesn't want to commit any extra money toward this device in case it belly-flops like previous endeavors (ie. MS's involvement and funding of the HD-DVD format). Okay, enough ranting. Was anyone else discouraged by their MS rep's lack of knowledge/training for the new device?
The rep in the Minneapolis area was actually a MS employee. He was plenty knowledgeable about the device, including why they weren't letting the public play with the device (he said the firmware had not been finalized yet, so they didn't want the public playing with a beta version of the firmware). I also found it amusing that the display was set up right in front of the MP3 player, totally blocking the ipods. He also confirmed that Apps and games would be coming. I told him to go back and tell MS to do a Pandora app, I hope he listens.
As for the device itself, like everyone else has stated, I was thoroughly impressed. Very smooth UI, very slick, and I can't wait to use it for HD radio when I'm on the go. It helped me decide to finally pre-order the Zune vs waiting to see what happens with the Zii egg.
What a cute looking box!
to: Jason, David, and Jonded
What store locations did you go to? I'm curious if they were the same ones I sent to...
whoops, i mean WENT to