Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player (Black)

Things that are great: audio, size, price, ease of use of hardware, picture, good randomized playlist feature, music store online, excellent battery life.

Things that are not so great: Screen cracks easily without provocation, software a pain to use, wireless sync still problematic

Things that are awful: No .avi or divx/xvid playability. This can supposedly be worked around through a registry hack, but I haven't gotten it to work. 80% of my videos are unwatchable on this.

I've never owned an ipod so when it came time to buy a cool video/music player I was seduced by the big screen coupled with the large hard drive. (Apple offers one or the other, but not both in a single device). I spent a long, miserable day trying to make this thing work for me. By 10PM I had listed it on Ebay and ordered an ipod. Expensive lesson.

For starters the software and hardware synch is classic Microsoft. Clunky, counterintuitive, never quite does what you want it to. I'm a technical guy and when I found myself frustrated I started imagining how a regular consumer must feel. It's that bad.

The worst part was the online store. The video selections are pathetically few. NO MOVIES!! I even tried downloading something from Amazon Unboxed, but the amazon software wouldn't recognize the zune and I was never able to pull any content onto the device. So...what you have is a beautiful screen on a run-of-the-mill (at best) mp3 player.

My new ipod arrived yesterday. The screen is a little smaller (but the hard drive is actually bigger--120Gb). It was wonderfully simple to set up. The itunes store has an unbelievable array of content. I hated the idea of being a Apple lemming, but they got it right. And Microsoft got it the way Microsoft always does...complicated and disappointing.

Advantage Apple.

i loved my zune when i first got it. it was great till not even 2 months later it just stopped working. nothing happened to it, didnt fall or anything. i picked it up to listen to it and in was making this weird clicking nosie like the hard drive was messed up then the contact customer support screen came up and thats all it will do now. im switching to ipod. don't buy a zune there garbage.

Gawd, what a POS!
The first one was DOA.Took it back-the volume controls(?) made static noise on the new one-The next one worked for 2 weeks then just died-MS you have billions how can you create such cheap cr*p? Are they assembled by chimps in China?

I was annoyed by my iPods ergonomics, but that is heaven compared to this junk
Also kind of embarrassing when people one after another remark "You have a WHAT?-Whats a Zoon?-Never heard of 'em"

I received this MP3 player as a gift from my brother and mom last Christmas and was overly thrilled! I wasn't expecting to get it, ya know? It was on my wish list but I thought it was an unrealistic request. I loved this thing! It was cool to have all my music on it, at least until near the end where I got close to maxing it out. This, along with the firmware 3.0 software, or maybe my wall outlet, or possibly cheap hardware started my problems. First off, it started by acting really sluggish. I thought, well Microsoft just released another Zune so maybe they also released an update to fix the slower 2.5 firmware. It solved it for a while. It then crashed more often. Recharged the player from the bottom up. Does it again. Now, I can't get tracks to play or anything. Wow! Not even to this Christmas and its dead! Its dead!!! Unbelievable! My brother got a 120GB Zune two weeks ago and died the next day. He traded it in to Best Buy for an Ipod Touch. He's happy and I'm broken hearted. Two things my experience has taught me. Don't buy any hardware from microsoft and if you do, get a warranty 2 years or better not from Microsoft but from a local store where you can trade this piece of garbage for something worthwhile like an Ipod! Or....go back to Cd players is all I can say. Update!!! It is still alive as of November 2! but I do not know how long. I'm thinking oh no, now I can't replace this thing. I will admit, it must have a brain inside it because like herbie, it has a mind of its own.