I own this. I bought one a few months after it came out. I was sick of The Man (Apple) dominating the mp3 player industry, so as soon as I found out The Other Man (Microsoft) was coming out with their own mp3 player I came as quick as I could to support them. They did not disappoint. Mostly.

At the time that I bought this, the iPod seemed like the only conceivable mp3 purchase for the mainstream music lover. However, when the Zune came out, there were four main features it had that the iPod did not. These are probably the three biggest reasons for why I bought it:

1) A radio. Pretty cool. Radio’s half-dead, but it’s nice to have it on there. You can use a radio on an iPod as well, but you have to buy a peripheral. Bleah.

2) Wireless sharing. You can share your music from Zune to Zune. Very cool. Finally I can attempt to impose my music tastes on anyone whose wireless waves come into contact with my own! Hooray. Just kidding. Kind of.

3) No iTunes. Probably the biggest reason I bought the Zune. iTunes is crap. It’s expensive, and it’s crap. You can use other music services with the iPod, but it’s designed to be used with iTunes. That’s why I was grateful for some good old Windows friendly apps. Now I can download wherever I want, and that means not on iTunes.

4) A bigger screen. Hey, it’s cool. You can actually see your movies. I’m pretty sure the iPod touch has a screen that’s just as big, or bigger, but it’s about $150 more expensive.

There are two major downsides to the Zune that I can think of. One I knew about when I bought it, the other I found out about after I bought it.

The first is that it’s kind of bulky compared to the iPod. I already knew that, but didn’t care. The bigger screen size makes it worth it.

The second, which is slightly more irritating, is the Zune software. I still like it better than iTunes. I think it’s just mp3 software that’s annoying, period. It’s a great media player for my music. It’s just that syncing can be a pain in the buttocks. My advice to you is get it right the first time. Or you will pay in time and blood and tears. That is all.

In my opinion, the pros definitely outweighed the cons, and still do. I still think it’s a better purchase than the iPod. However, since it does have a couple annoying things, I’d give it about an 8.5/10. Slightly better than 4 stars. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an alternative to the iPod.

I like music. I probably like it too much. That’s why my Zune is jam-packed with happiness that I can measure in gigabytes.

If you would like to buy a 30GB Zune for $50 less than I bought it for (a year and a half ago), click here.

If you would like to buy an 80GB Zune for $100 more than I bought a 30GB Zune (a year and a half ago), click here.

If you would like to buy a much more compact 8GB Zune, click here.

If you’re tired of all this Zune crap and want to go to the dark side, click here.

Last 5 posts by Jason Matthews

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