Zune Thoughts: PCworld.ca Reviews the Zune

"The Zune music player and brand has finally arrived onto Canadian soil almost two years after it first hit store shelves in the U.S. And yet, we are the first foreign market for the Zune, possibly affecting where and when it hits next. The first-generation Zune was an example of poor taste in colours and style. The brown one was especially my favourite to pick on because it resembled the kind of human waste that attracts large numbers of flies. The "three plays or three days" policy for sharing music on the original Zune was also laughable."



Well the first "Canadian" review of the Zune is now in, and despite the bandwagon-jumping-Microsoft-trashing quote above, reviewer Ted Kritsonis ends up liking the Zune a fair bit. He gave it an 8.5 out of 10, and that's without the inclusion of the Zune marketplace (which has yet to launch in Canada). I find it irritating when reviewers mention that the Zune can't play DRM-protected iTunes, but don't mention the reason why: Apple won't license their ironically-named "FairPlay" DRM to other companies. Place the blame in the right place Kritsonis - I'm sure the Zune team would love to license Apple's DRM because it would mean removing one more barrier to an iPod owner switching to the Zune. But, surprise surprise, Apple wouldn't allow that because they're the 900 pound gorilla in the media player market and they use their weight to do monopolistic things such as trademark the shape of their players.

All in all, the Zune fares quite well in this review - but the lack of Zune Pass being immediately available in Canada makes the Zune a cool digital media player, but ultimately not that radically different from competing products from Samsung, Creative, SanDisk, etc. The Zune desktop software is sure a lot better than having to use Windows Media Player 11 to sync though!