( The Blog of Rude: Life of Geekery & Pop Culture )

I have decided to join the Dark Side

After having used my new 8GB Zune for the past three weeks, I have finally found the time to write a mini Rudeopinion on the device and also post a bunch of photos of it.

What's a Zune?

Well let's see if I can make up...umm, find, a definition

Zune [noun, pronounced: Zün]:

A Microsoft brand of Portable Digital Media Player whose innovative feature set, hardware design, and emphasis on social networking, has allowed it to become a viable competitor to Apple's iPod brand. The Zune has the potential to help Microsoft gradually grasp a substantial share of the North American PDMP/DAP market.

Now that we all know what Zune is, I might as well tell you what the 8GB Zune can do, which in my opinion is: Just about everything you would expect from a small DAP, and MUCH more.

Not enough info for you?
Read -> http://www.zune.net/en-US/products/zune4gb...8gb/default.htm


Design: Simple is Sexy




The Zune is one of the best looking portable digital media players I have ever owned, and as you can see, the beauty of the Zune is in its clean and minimalist design.

The front of the zune is not cluttered with a bunch of buttons, or text, just the sharp 1.8 inch screen, two almost flush buttons for the back and play/pause actions, and the nice and large 2-in-1 touchpad/directional pad. The matte finish on the front and rear of the Zune feels great and also looks great. The Zune's inclusion of a touchpad now makes the miniscule "scroll wheel" of the iPod Nano seem well, illogical, but I digress...




As you can see, the Zune is thinner than my Motorola Razr V3xx cellphone, and only slightly longer than the "USB Stick" Samsung YP-U2J.


Extra Accessories

Matchstick.ca has provided me with a few accessories to compliment my Zune




Pictured above are the Zune Premium Headphones v2. They are the in-ear noise cancelling type that can be used as earplugs when not listening to music

The Zune R&D team who designed these earphones are geniuses. Why? Well for one, the back of each earphone contains a small magnet of opposite polarity that causes the earphones to stick together when in close vicinity of each other. This greatly reduces the possibility of the earphone wires getting tangled. The next innovative aspect of the headphone design is in the cloth used to shield the wires. Any Canadian who has used typical headphones during a -25 degrees celsius winter day, can attest to the rubber around their headphone wires becoming very rigid and almost unmanageable. That won't happen with these headphones.

So how do they sound?....can't tell you just yet, read on



The little box pictured above is the AC adaptor: You plug it into an outlet, and then plug one end of the USB cable that came with the Zune into the AC adaptor, and the other end into the Zune. The AC adaptor reduces the charging time by a little over 1hr.


User Interface: As Easy As it Gets



Thanks to the touchpad, the Zune User Interface is SO easy and straight forward to use that there's really no point giving an in depth explanation on how to use it. Any 5 year old that has used a touchpad on a laptop could get the hang of the UI within a few minutes. The faster you slide your thumb vertically over the touchpad, the faster the various on-screen lists scroll. Sliding your thumb horizontally scrolls through any options that are listed at the top.

Audio




Video




Podcasts




FM Radio



Your eyes do not deceive you. The Zune supports Radio Broadcast Data System (RBDS/RDS), which allows the Zune to display the station name, station genre, and info related to the currently playing track from any FM radio station that supports this technology. Pretty cool isn't it?


Wireless Bliss



The ability to synchronize and update my Zune's content without having to connect it to my PC is one of the best features of the device. I always have new Audio and Video Podcasts being uploaded to my Zune after daily wireless synchronizations that usually take no more than 3 minutes. My music collection is a little over 4GB in size, so I never have pick and choose what songs I want to synchronize, or attempt to wirelessly synchronizing hundreds of songs at once.

After being spoiled by the Zunes WiFi synch ability, I don't see myself ever buying another portable digital media player that cannot do the same.

Another useful wireless feature of the Zune is the ability to share songs and photos wirelessly to other nearby Zuners. My cousin has a Zune 30, so I will definitely update this Rudeopinion with a few photos of us testing this feature.

Zune to Zune File Sharing







The Goods: Audio & Video Quality

One word: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, yeah I probably need to find a synonym for that.

Whether I am listening to music from my audio collection, watching videos, or tuning into a local radio station, when the Zune is paired with the in-ear Premium Headphones everything sounds great and balanced with nice lows, mids and highs. At a volume setting of 3/20, the sound is mighty loud. I rarely need to set the volume any higher than this!.

Although it's not so obvious in the previous photographs displaying a clip from Monster's Inc, the screen on the Zune is incredibly sharp. Infact, it's so sharp that most of the videos that I have uploaded to it look somewhat HiDef. The screen is only 1.8 inches, so those of you who aren't equipped with a decent pair of eyes should probably opt for the Zune 80 and its large 3.2 inch screen.

My only video related gripe is that the Zune software will not transcode and synchronize my XP Windows Media Center TV recordings... for some reason this can only be done using Windows Vista Media Center


Music Gone Social



Zune Social is one of the major selling points of the Zune that allows the device to clearly distinguishes itself from all other portable media players on the market. The social networking aspect of the Zune device, PC software, and web site are very cohesive and enjoyable to use.



Once you've signed into Zune Social for the first time, your friends list is automatically populated by 6 Zune DJs. After taking a few minutes to sift through their favorite artists, and recently played songs I ended up deleting 2 of them, and then decided to look for everyday Zuners who listen to similar musical genres as I do. 3 Weeks later I have 11 Zune friends whose musical tastes has allowed me to discover artists that I have never listened to before, and albums that are worth purchasing. Sadly, Zune Marketplace is not yet available in Canada, so for the time being I have to look elsewhere to purchase these songs.



Looks like someone wants to be my friend




The Zune software allows you to synchronize your friends Zune Card to your player. Once having done so, you can view their favourite songs, top artists, and recent plays on the Zune. When the Zune Marketplace and Zune Pass subscription services are available in Canada, the software will also upload those songs to your Zune, allowing you to listen to what your friends have been listening to.


Coming Soon to a Zune Near You: Games




Zune Gaming is still in an early beta stage, but it looks very promising. Unlike the iPod Nano's "scroll wheel" gaming controls, the touchpad and dpad on the Zune works wonders to make gaming on the Zune much more than just a novel add-on. You can expect most polished games to look incredibly sharp. The game pictured in the above photos was developed by Microsoft's Zune development team, games created by the Zune XNA developer community may not feature such beautiful graphics...but I'm sure some will.


Conclusion

I'm hooked on Zune



The Zune 8GBs' direct competitor is the iPod Nano, and I have no doubt that as more people discover the Zune and explore its social networking features, the Zune will eventually take a significant bite out of the Nano's sales. If your main PC runs Windows XP/Vista, and you're looking for a small flash based "MP3 Player", I suggest that you take a LONG look at the Zune 8GB.

Thanks to Matchstick, yours truly is now 1 of only 300 music loving Canucks that have been given an 8GB Zune with several accessories to blog about. Over the course of the next few weeks I will be providing you with updates about my Zune experience.

For now, take a look at my flashy Zune Card

UPDATE (July 17 2008):

Last week was pretty hectic for me, but I should be able to post my RudeOpinion on the Zune soon. Gotta say, I REALLY like it.

I found my old iRiver Slimx CD MP3 Player from a few years ago, so I decided to write a mini review...Yup I have a lot of free time on my hands today!



iRiver SlimX

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The Slim factor in SlimX



Take out a 10 cent coin, and take a good look, cause the SlimX is slightly shorter (in height) than one. This also makes it very light, even with the batteries installed. Speaking of batteries, as you can see they look like a stick a of gum.

Bright is Right - The Remote



The LCD screen on the remote is very bright and clear, and the blue backlight is nice to see. Some of the menus use a font size that is too small for my eyes...but I'll get used to it (hopefully).

This remote is a must, without it you can't do too much...most of the basic buttons/functions are also on the CD Player itself, but with no LCD on the player they're of little use.The Menu system is system is pretty slick, and well laid out. There are too many options and submenus for me to list or talk about, but take my word for it when I say that nothing comes close to the SlimX's customizability.

Rudeboystylez branded <-------- ----> Snakebyte (game)


Looks nice, and it doubles as an advertisement tool. Snakebyte is an oldie, but its fun to play. You can play the game while you're listening to either an Audio CD or a "MP3" CD. The SlimX has A LOT of available memory, and decent processing power, so games, newer audio formats, or anything else that can be displayed on the tiny screen can eventually be added to the SlimX.

Battery Life



It seems to be okay at best. On its first full charge, the rechargeable batteries died after around 10 and 1/2 hours. Iriver claims the unit to have 13 hrs of playback time with the rechargeable batteries, and an extra 10 or so hours with the external battery pack.

Sound Quality

Well the included earphones are nice looking but sound terrible . They produce practically no bass, and the earphones seem to be slightly out of phase. When coupled with a better set of headphones, the bass produced by the SlimX is not as deep as my really old Minidisc players bass response, however the bass and treble response is comparable to that of my Samsung YP-U2J. There's a built in equalizer, so everyone should be able to modify its output enough so that they'll hear something that they like.

The FM tuner seems to pick up most of the radio stations that I listen to in Montreal ....actually the only radio station that I listen to: 99.5 FM Classical music at its best.

Conclusion

The SlimX is...errr...was amazing



*This is my first attempt at writing a rudeopinion while being sober-esque

Anyhow, back to the brown box in my closet the Slimx shall go...

I lost my smartphone a few hours ago *I think* somewhere in the metro station



...other than visiting the lost & found tomorrow, what the heck am I going to do?

I finally found a small and inexpensive audio player (Samsung YP-U2J) on sale that I can use while performing my not so high impact warm up routine at the local basketball court. It's small enough and light enough to attach to my shorts without being a nuisance.



This is going to sound odd:

I have noticed that shooting free throws while listening to a couple of tracks by Björk that were in between my favorite Bob Marley songs actually improved my free throw shooting!