I first started writing this article with a positive attitude concerning Microsoft’s MP3 player. I ended up thinking Zune is a crap. So I changed the title.
First of all, as a Zune reviewer, you have to sign something that’s called “reviewers kit agreement”, probably one of the most stupid things ever to emanate from Redmond. As John C Dvorak said, they should really be ashamed of themselves for sending this piece of paper to intelligent people
According to the contract, you cannot take Zune it apart, you have no permission whatsoever to disassemble it (can you remove the battery?!) and you have to write in your review only terms imposed by the contract. We all know that it is of common sense for enthusiast sites to review a product by disassembling it and posting pictures of how it looks inside, just to give the potential customers the chance of knowing more about what they’ll buy.
One reason for Microsoft’s secrecy (or stupidity, but that is just so common for Redmond…) is the fact that customers could actually find out before they buy what Zune is actually like: almost twice bigger than any regular iPod (and probably even bigger than iPod’s manual…). So I say to my self: ok, it has these dimensions because it gives you a lot of new features and you can’t pack those into something smaller. But then again: maybe they’ve included some big, old flash memory or some components from the ’90 and they wouldn’t want you to realize that before…
The overall impression is that Zune looks rather like an Archos media player and it should probably be included in the portable media players’ category, instead of triumphantly call it the iPod killer.
Another annoying thing about the MP3 player is that Microsoft will roll out Zune only in the US for the time being, and they’ve also announced that Europe and other important markets like Australia or Japan won’t see Zune before 2008!! Way to go Microsoft! Ok, I know Apple has taken its time before launching iTunes outside the US, but Microsoft is like… starting from scratch! They did sign those fancy contracts with major record labels in the US, they have secured all those titles, but they are all in the US! What are they going to do when they’ll launch it in Britain or France or China? And don’t tell me they haven’t thought about that before…
And Zune’s won’t work with Window Media Player 11! To be able to use that… thing you’ll of course have to install the Zune software. Oh, I can already foresee the customers’ delight…
And let’s talk about the “slogan”: “Welcome to the social”…Hm… Is Zune made for kids or am I having the impression that “the connected entertainment” stuff means actually creating a herd? Is that their idea of hype?
But, wait, there’s more! If you want to buy a song from the Zune Marketplace, your credit card won’t do. Of course, Microsoft wants you to have a totally different (and abnormal) experience compared to iTunes, so they’ve prepared a little trick: you cannot pay with your credit card, you have to buy Microsoft points! Just like in Xbox Live. Obviously it has to be $5 or more worth of MS points to be able to use their service…Let’s revise: you first see your usual and comfortable credit card rejected; then you are informed that you have to use MS points, not money; and then, you have to find out what a MS point is and what it’s worth, because although a track costs 99 cents, that equals in MS points 79 points… And you have to buy at minimum the equivalent in MS points of 5 dollars…
The reason for all this mess? Every one knows that you have a different approach when spending money or point: money- you work for them hard, points- they’re not that “personal”. So you tend to spend more points than money…Clever…
But then again, the whole idea of making customers enter yet another DRM-protected crap (after, of course, killing the PlaysForSure thing) is another example of how to graciously shoot yourself in the foot. People are dreaming of times when DRM protected tunes will disappear and, for example, Universal already made its music content available for SpiralFrog for scanning, in the future hope of ad-driven revenues from free songs.
By the way, remember what Microsoft announced last week? That they will pay Universal a fee for every Zune they sell? First of all, considering Zune’s sales rates, that’ll be an astoundingly low fee… Second of all, that’s just bribe they’re offering, trying to let us know that they are ok with the content providers and that we can peacefully buy the Zune. They’re assuming by this that every Zune buyer is a potential music pirate and in order not to end up with trials on their heads, they’re just “sharing” profits. So WTF did they build Zune Marketplace? Where’s the actual profit?
All in all, no iPod killing features here…Just a wireless brick. The only good part I can find for Zune is that its appearance on the market is good for competition. But don’t expect it to generate the global hype that Apple’s product did.
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I got a slogan "zoom away zune"
Source: http://www.playfuls.com/news_05187_T...une_brick.html
Source: 
Seriously...
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