Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Zune owners in Washington, D.C., might be out of luck if they want to use the related Zune Marketplace online music service. An apparent glitch is keeping people from signing up for the service with credit cards that have billing addresses in any one of four Washington, D.C., ZIP codes. The problem itself isn't news. It was noted by the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro in this November review and acknowledged by Microsoft in December on this support page. Granted, it's not a huge swath of the country, and it's only one area of the city. But the weird thing is that the issue appears to have persisted to this day, unexplained, several months after the Zune launch."

While I don't use the Zune Marketplace, I would still be very annoyed to discover I couldn't if I wanted to. Then I would be downright angry when, five months later, the issue remained unresolved. So, if you live in D.C. and you were thinking about a Zune, you might want to consider whether or not you're likely to use the Zune Marketplace. If you do want to, you might want to wait for this bug to be resolved. Maybe they'll have it fixed in time for Zune v2...

"The new Zune digital-media player may be an all-Microsoft production, but it feels like it came from two companies. One's the smart, aggressive competitor that built the Xbox and Xbox 360 game consoles, carving out a franchise from scratch in a tough market. The other's the clumsy, lumbering giant that can't seem to avoid occasionally stepping on its own customers. That combination won't help the Zune grab market share from Apple's iPod. Apple has dominated the market by emphasizing simplicity above all, and Microsoft aims to follow suit with the Zune, a wireless-enabled player that sells for $250."

Washington Post has published an interesting analysis of the Zune. Long story short, it's simple on the outside, but not on the inside - and most of the complexities lie with the Zune software. It's almost a clone of Windows Media Player 11, give or take a few features. Some old bugs are there, and some new ones have popped up (almost all reviewers have commented on the long installation times or worse, failing installations). While I do respect Microsoft's decision to rush the Zune out the door in time for Christmas, I wish they had spent the extra time losing the WMP roots and rewriting the platform from the ground up. I guess it's a little late for that now.