Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

There are perks to being a blogger. One of those perks is (pseudo)free stuff. I recently got a Zune sent to me by a marketing company, asking me to review it, and mention it both online and to my friends. If you’re like most people, you don’t know what a Zune is. It’s an MP3 player, a lot like an iPod Nano, and the version I have does both WiFi and FM radio which is a step up from an iPod nano. However, the music bought for the Zune is encrusted with DRM, just like the stuff from iTunes, and so I probably won’t be buying any non-MP3 music for it.

- The entire top half of that picture is overpackaging in action.

Normally I wouldn’t be so critical of free stuff, but since I’m supposed to be giving my honest opinion and I honestly wouldn’t want anyone (especially friends) to plunk down ~$180 on a device so crippled by DRM and underwhelming design.

There is an obvious separation between the designers and the people with the rubber stamp who let this device go to market. First of all, the features blow every iPod, except the iTouch, out of the water. Where the Zune falls down, is in how it’s intentionally crippled so it is useless except for exactly how Microsoft envisioned you using it.

Features:

FM radio - I was kind of disappointed when I turned it on for the first time, after I got it and its accessories out of their grossly over packaged boxes. The player did nothing but tell me that I had to connect to a website to download the latest software before it would do anything. Not even the FM radio would work for me right away. Come onnnn! That’s ultra-lame.

Imagine picking up a Zune on the road, and you buy the AC Adapter accessory too so you can charge it in your modern car with an AC inverter, and you plug your brand new Zune in to get some tunes off the free airwaves, and your “radio” tells you to plug into a computer before it can authorize you to do such a thing!

So you take the Zune home, and sit down at your Mac or Linux computer… hold it. Unlike the iPod, the Zune only works on Windows XP or Vista. Seriously? This is 2008, and Microsoft would still try to lock people into needing XP or Vista in order to buy their hardware? The iPod is rather popular remember, how is limiting device functionality going to make people switch to the Zune?

The software install process was difficult and long. The Zune didn’t come with the latest firmware (or the playlist/sync software even! It would not be hard to include it on the 8GB of space on the device, but I’ll explain in a moment why they didn’t do that clever thing), and it required an update flash before it would even sync with my music library. The Zune rebooted no less than 4 times automatically during the flash process. That doesn’t sound like a Microsoft product at all!

More (non)features to come in further reviews of my Zune…

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Earlier this week I watched the sequel to the scary “28 Days Later”, “28 Weeks Later” [8/10], and it was probably more terrifying than the original. Without being a spoiler, I can say it has a much sadder ending than the first too. It has, what I’m coming to realize days later, complexities to the plot that would have had me on the edge of my seat even more had they been explained rather than just hinted at. A certain Infected zombie was apparently driven by a hideous desire to destroy the genetically resistant. If you need to acquire a blood pressure problem, then watch these two movies.