Well, new Zunes are out. Here’s a link to CNET’s review.
The 80 GB model seems pretty sweet.
Anyway, some nice stuff. . .
FM Radio (I know this doesn’t excite everyone, but I’m still a radio junkie).
3.2 inch screen.
WI-FI syncs! That’s right. Wi-fi syncs.
Anyway, I’ve decided to recently join the portable media age, and I’m getting one of the first generation 30 GB Zunes, and bringing over my 200+ CD collection (not large by a lot of standards, but not paltry). They’ve been selling for about $100-$140 depending on. . .the color.
That’s a lot of GIGs for $100, if you ask me. I’ve never been totally happy with 128 kb/s MP3 quality, so I’ve been ripping my CD’s at 192 kb/s in WMA format. And I have about 20 GB of CDs at that level. Fortunately, they sound very good when played by my laptop through my home stereo. I was A/B-ing MJ Blige and Bono singing “One” last night with the laptop and the CD player, and it was nigh-on indistinguishable to my ears.
One of CNET’s complaints seemed to be that there are no TV shows at the Zune Marketplace (like there are at iTunes). That actually disappoints me. Especially since you can hook the Zune up to your TV and play it’s video through it.
Anyway, that’s a pretty sweet little machine, if you ask me. I’m still going to be the first person I know who has a Zune, but they might be making inroads.
They look ok to me. Like any would-be iPod killer, they’ll have to solidly win on some combination of price and features to really make serious inroads.
Nothing in the stats really leaps out at me. The iPod has a bigger screen (in the touch). The iPod has a bigger hard drive (in the classic). I’m sure radio is a selling point for some people, but I doubt it’s a major one. The price is somewhat better than Apple, but I don’t know if it’s enough to overcome the cool factor.
I’m very interested in the WiFi syncs, depending on how its accomplished. Do I have to do a bunch of stuff each time, or is it just “set it up once, and it’ll sync every time it’s in range.” If the latter, that’s really cool, but it’s also a feature that Apple can duplicate pretty easily if they care to.
I’m looking at getting the 80G version eventually, partly just because I don’t want to jump on the iPod bandwagon. The price is the same as the 80G iPod Classic, has a few extra features, and isn’t really missing anything I want. Also, being from Microsoft, it would be nice to be able to load my WMV files on it, since consensus seems to be that transcoding out of that format is a bitch.
I just got several of the old 30GB models for $90 in two separate woots. Some were brown and some were black or white. They apparently made a lot of the 1st Gen Zunes, and they did not sell very well. I have had a chance to use the device and it is not bad, no worse than the Toshiba Gigabeat which it is based on.
First off, let me say this: I am a huge Apple fanboy on the PC side. All my personal machines are Macs and I am writing this on a Mac right now. I think the additional cost of a Mac PC more than makes up for it in usability, the modern OS, and an absolute lack of viruses & crapware. But when it comes to consumer electronics, in the latest Woot I was able to buy three Zunes, two as Xmas presents, for roughly the cost of one (last gen, lets be fair here) 30GB video iPod.
I’m already looking for a way to use the new 2.2 firmware AND the registry hack to make mine work properly as a USB Mass Transfer Device. Since this is IMHO and not the BBQ pit, Ill just say that lack of USB support is “silly” and not WTF!? material.