My Zune HD: Half year later

[Kirby]

I purchased a Zune HD Christmas of 2009 when bing was having a bunch of cashback deals. I got the 32GB Platinum one for $246.49 shipped from Dell using a 15% E&A coupon, then on top of that I got an additional $49.30 bing cashback. So just under $200 in the end. Awesome deal at the time. They retailed at Dell for $289.99. There was probably places that sold it for less, but I doubt any lower than $250. I probably should have bought like 4 to resell on eBay...

This would be my first "MP3 player", unless you count my phone. I had originally planned to buy a Zune phone when it came out (and you know Microsoft is going to make one), and not buy the Zune HD. But that went out the window when I noticed I could get the 32GB model for only $200. The first time I saw it was at Frys, and the first thing I thought was, "It's smaller than I imagined." It was bolted down in a display box and wasn't on so I couldn't play with it. I have a severe dislike of Apple, so I refuse to own any Apple product. I will admit that the iPod and iPhone are awesome products. I will also admit the Macbooks were probably the best laptops when they first came out. I wouldn't really use their OS, but that's mainly because I'm familiar with Windows. However, Apple's business ethics is like a Soviet Iron Fist, back in the 70's... I don't like their misleading/mudslinging advertising, and I don't like their treatment of their customers. They treat their customers like crap, and then brainwash them to have them think they're being treated like royalty and overcharge them on top of that. But I'm getting off track... So I got the Zune HD mid-December, but I didn't get to use it until a few days later because the protective skin I ordered hadn't arrived yet. Well, I did take it out in it's plastic baggie thing and let it charge. I bought a skin from bestskinsever.com. It's just as good as the more expensive one, which I can't remember the name of. It just doesn't have a lifetime warranty. Who's going to claim a warranty on a protective skin though? I didn't do a perfect job of putting it on, but you can't really tell unless you look at it really closely at certain angles.

Since I've used the device for awhile, I'll point out somethings I wish were improved. Overall I do like the device btw.

I've used an iPhone 3G and iPod a little bit before, and the Zune HD is definitely smaller. It also feels more dense compared to the iPod. Not heavy, but more like a single solid piece. It almost feels like you're holding a solid piece of glass or ceramic tile. It's slightly small for a portable media player. Not great to watch movies on it, but you still can. However, the size would be perfect for a phone. I do like the aesthetic styling of the Zune HD over the iPod. The screen is OLED, and it's damn gorgeous. I do wish it was higher resolution though.

The interface is intuitive and nice, but I kind of like the iPod interface more. The music interface looks nice, and I like how the images for the artist are displayed in the background. I don't like how difficult it is to alter the playlist. In fact, it's so hard to make a playlist, I would say your only option is to do it on the computer and transfer it. Don't even try if you want to change a song name or properties. About the only thing you can set for a song on the device is the song rating. However, the ratings only have 3 levels. You either dislike, not rating, or like a song. I would have preferred at least 5. Video playback is fairly easy. You have a slider for skipping to certain points, and it do so pretty fast. There's no option for video playlists. Also, if the video is 4:3, you can't stretch it to 16:9. You can only zoom in on it, which is kind of lame. Each video saves your last view position, so you can resume where you left off on multiple videos.

The touch surface is responsive, and supports multi touch. Scrolling bars on the edges are even responsive. The audio sounds great. The equalizer options are limited, but I leave it on normal anyways. There's no "line-out" mode. I liked hooking it up to my PC at work and listening to the HD radio from it, but I had to max out the volume on the Zune. If I didn't turn up the Zune, I'd have to crank up the speakers, and if any other sounds came through it would scary me shitless.

The wifi is 802.11g I believe and gets a decent signal. It signs onto my WPA2 AES network, but I can't seem to get it to connect to SSID hidden networks though. There's an option to sync the Zune via the wireless network, but it's painfully slow. The browser is pretty fast and seems to render pages ok. There's no flash support, which is a shame. There's also no download option in the browser, even for files the Zune can play. There's several games for free on the Zune marketplace, and several of them are fairly entertaining. I do like the music subscription model they have, and I may subscribe to it at some point in the future.
Update: It seems Microsoft got the hidden SSID connection to work. So that's one thing off the list.

Last but not least: the Zune HD does crash/lockup. Oh Microsoft, how one could joke about your software... It doesn't happen often though, and mostly when I'm locking or unlocking the device while it's playing music or listening to the radio. I think the browser has crashed on me once. It has locked up several times when I was trying to use the wifi sync function.

Still, most of these are minor nitpicks. The main thing I wish they'd implement would be the playlist editor. How hard can it be to have a check menu for songs I want on the playlist? or even the ability to add/delete songs to/from the playlist? We'll see how they do with the Windows 7 Phone. I hear it's supposed to be out end of the year.
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