Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Yesterday, I was telling you about the difficulties in getting what should be a slick MP3 player/FM radio to work. Just as you shouldn’t count your chickens before they are hatched, you should not count on the Zune to work until it’s patched. If you have dial-up and buy a brand new Zune, expect an 8 hour download before you can even use the FM radio in it.

I’m sure everyone has wanted a radio that needs to phone home to Microsoft before it will even tune. But the features of the Zune don’t stop failing to live up to their potential there! Yes, there’s more Digital Restrictions Management - DRM (AKA less)!

Features:
8GB of flash storage - This is a significant space upgrade over my 128MB flash drive, 1GB iPod Shuffle, and even 4GB minivault hard drive. There’s just one BIG catch though. The Zune’s storage space can’t be used like those other storage and/or MP3 playing devices, as a portable hard drive. When you plug it into a computer, you have to hack the registry to even SEE the device’s storage space. And if you try to copy files off of the Zune, it tells you that Access is Denied!

Your purchased files, and free ones you created yourself, wind up encrypted and inaccessible on all but your own computer(s) (maximum 3). Really, the limitations and caveats put on the features of the Zune’s hardware, are mind boggling and complicated. Here is a summary on Engadget (which is getting out of date possibly, although more restrictions may have been added/lifted since then).

Because the Zune can’t be detected as an external hard drive in any computer (including Macs and Linux) the designers couldn’t include a copy of the huge 41MB install file required to make the device work initially. By comparison, I plugged in my iPod Shuffle, downloaded iShuffle.exe (288KB) from Packard on the Web, copied a hundred MP3 files to a Music folder on the Shuffle, ran iShuffle.exe, and seconds later had a working MP3 player. I can also take those MP3 (and other) files off the Shuffle and put them on any, and as many, computers as I want (including Macs and Linux boxes).

WiFi communication - Geeks drool at the thought of wirelessly transmitting their music collection around. You could share with friends who have Zunes, talk to your library on your home computer or Xbox, or wherever. Time to stop drooling. The WiFi in the Zune is crippled, and doesn’t even work as a simple web browser like the iPod Touch. If you do manage to find someone else with a Zune to share music wirelessly, the transferred songs only play for 3 days, can’t be copied to the other person’s home computer, and can not be transferred again to that person. That goes for music you played and recorded yourself! (This is what Industry Minister Jim Prentice was talking about when the “market decides” how to handle Digital Restrictions Management.)

USB connection - The USB connection on the Zune charges the battery, flashes the firmware, and transfers the music/videos/photos. Like the iPods, they have a flimsy slim connector, instead of a mini-B USB like many cameras and cell phones use. The iPod Shuffle 2G also suffers from the same sort of specialized USB cable requirement.

Video and picture viewing - Something that my screenless Shuffle can’t live up to, is the ability to display videos and photos. I was able to transfer .wmv videos that I made using Windows Movie Maker, and play them on the Zune. The Zune software found the folder with my videos, and offered to sync them, which was handy. What isn’t so handy is that I can’t put my videos and photos onto another computer using the Zune as storage media, because of the digital lock lockout. I use my Shuffle as extra camera memory on vacations. The Zune is pretty much useless to me in that capacity because it wont’ work with my Linux laptop where I can transfer files around.

Bottom line - The Zune’s feature list is very promising, but it fails to deliver where it counts for me. I need control over my files, I don’t want control of them taken away from me. I want my portable media player to also work as a portable storage system. I want to use it on both of my computers (XP/Ubuntu Linux, and Sugar Linux XO) and my friends’ Macs. I want WiFi to not have bogus caveats put on its use, and it should include a simple web browser or email reader. The FM radio should work out of the box (like, duh!). The packaging should be minimalist and not a giant middle finger to the environment.

Why am I being so picky about something that was free for me? Because it isn’t free for someone else, and people need to know that they should expect more from (what are essentially disposable) electronics. This is 2008, and we may not have the flying car as promised, but we can have a music player that:
- transmits songs back and forth wirelessly (Bluetooth or WiFi)
- interfaces with a vehicle wirelessly (Bluetooth or FM) and/or with a universal USB connector
- plays and records radio and also records via microphone (video and photos for bonus points)
- plays most common and free video and audio formats
- includes a web browser if it has WiFi built in
- has a user-replaceable rechargeable battery (solar recharge for bonus points)
- has games, and firmware hackability
- works with existing software on most computers available today, without requiring a download

It’s devices like the Zune that convince people that learning about digital media is difficult and a specialized field reserved for 12 year olds and computer geeks. It’s nothing of the sort if standards are worked out, and digital locks are thrown out of the design plans. Then your wildest technological dreams become possible, because you can do what you expect, instead of being told “Access is Denied”.

I’m going to give my Zune a bit of time to grow on me, but at this point I’m fairly confident that I should offer it up as a booby prize or to someone who is looking to hack it and make firmware for it that actually fixes the numerous problems and complications.

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.

Almost anyone who has been on the Internet (in particular interactive or Web 2.0 websites) for a few years has encountered the phenomenon of electronic shunning. It happens when the website you frequently use and have become a member of, suddenly kicks you (or part of your content) off. The reason may be legitimate, or completely random and difficult to accept.

I’ve been shunned from eBay’s forums before, and had legitimate auctions removed which didn’t violate the rules of the site. Bloggers who allow comments have to make frequent decisions on how to handle abusive or unpleasant comments. It’s Wild West Web, except that each of the virtual communities we inhabit have potentially dozens of sheriffs with a multitude of backgrounds and biases, and none of them have to look the accused in the eye. It’s not hard to silence someone to the point where they just have to mosey on down the information highway to even be heard. Governments are nearly powerless to make it any easier to have free speech on the Net, and are only in the position to take the rest of our free speech online away.

In looking for the phrase “digital dystopia” I found this well written paper on DRM, Net Neutrality, and Copyright, and how it was clear to that author [and me] at least two years ago that each were critical issues in the continuation of the “free” WWW as we know it. It seems as the web grows, the number of providers of space shrinks. With each passing buy-out, we’re slowly losing Net Neutrality because the competing content hosts can’t stack up to the massive “free” resources afforded by Google, Yahoo, LiveJournal, and others.

Remember the Sony Rootkit scandal where they broke peoples’ computers in an effort to enforce their copyrighted discs? Well, Judge not, lest Yous be Judged, Sony BMG.

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Hat tip to Flaming the Bear