Number 287 - April 2007

Zune - The New Digital Media Player from Microsoft
by Cass Lewart (rlewart@monmouth.com), ACGNJ News Mar 07
I was always fascinated with portable MP3 players and wrote several articles about them. At the January 2007 convention of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG) in Las Vegas, which Ruth and I attended, Microsoft, which sponsored several events during the convention, conducted a raffle for a Zune player .There were over 200 participants in the drawing. The first person whose name was drawn from the hat was not present, I was the next and only winner and I promised the Microsoft people that I would write a review. I found many Zune reviews on the web mostly written by people who did not even see the player. I figured out that I could do a better job.    The astounding success of Apple's iPod obviously convinced Microsoft that there is a large demand and a lot of money to be made in the portable player market--Zune was the answer. After experimenting with it for a couple of weeks I came to the conclusion that Zune is a strong entry. The hardware is superb, but the software leaves much to be desired. There is no printed Users Manual in the package, just a page of sketchy instructions. Limited information is available through Help files, on-line manuals and a toll-free support line. First the hardware    A quiet 30 GB drive from Toshiba, as stated in the FCC submission, stores zillions of "songs", if this is your cup of tea. The screen is larger than that of iPod, shows bright colors and has excellent resolution. The built-in FM tuner, with earphone cable used as antenna, has excellent sensitivity and sound. The tuner uses Routing Data Base System technology to recognize station call letters and programs, if this information is provided by the station. During a membership drive you may even see on screen the number to call to make a pledge. Time and date functions were unfortunately left out. A widely promoted feature of Zune, which makes it a "social" animal, is the capability to transmit wireless music and video to another Zune. Note that an item received from another Zune can be watched or listened to only 3 times during the next 3 days, then it "dies". I could not test this feature as neither Best Buy nor Dell had an operating Zune on display. Something to be aware of is that trying to sync to a second computer erases all contents on the player unless the player is designated as "guest", which poses some restrictions. Digital Rights Management (DRM) raises its ugly head. The internal battery is charged via a USB2 port on your computer or an optional power supply.	Now about software    I got bad vibes when I first inserted the Zune CD into my computer running Windows 2000. The cryptic error message on the screen was: "path to device or program could not be found". I admit that, as I noticed later, small print on the box warns that Windows XP with SP2 or Vista are the only operating systems that support the player.    The player does not appear as a drive in "My Computer", you can only access it via Zune Desktop software. This approach, also used in the iPod, tightly controls what material the user can upload or download to the player. I tried to make Zune appear as a drive by making some changes to Registry. Such changes were suggested in the Yahoo Zune forum, but I have not been successful so far.    Unprotected MP3, JPG and WMV files can be "dragged" to the Zune Desktop and organized into Playlists. Unprotected files in AVI or BMP formats can be converted to work on Zune. DRM protected files from Apple or even from Microsoft not specifically designed for Zune will not work. After "dragging" files to the Zune Desktop you have to connect the player to the computer via a special cable provided in the package and click on the "Sync Now" button. A small sign will appear announcing the completion of the Sync process. There is no visible progress bar.    I looked into commercial sources of audio/visual material for the player. As I mentioned in previous articles there are many sources of free MP3 spoken word and music files. A number of on-line stores advertise unlimited downloading for a one time fee of $30-$50. However, I could not find out what they actually offer. I did not find any full time movies. Microsoft's own store offers many "songs" for under a dollar each. A feature of Zune which I did not investigate is its TV connectivity--it requires a special $29.95 cable. Both NTSC and PAL formats are supported.    I still use my simple, small, under $50 Sansa 512 MB MP3 player. It has no video, a hard-to-read small screen and no WiFi. But it has a built-in voice recorder, the player appears as a drive on my desktop and it uses AAA batteries. I don' t have to worry that it would run out of charge. It even came with a printed though rather poorly written manual. Make your choice!
Number 287 - April 2007