Zune a player without any players

Stan Beer
Thursday, 16 November 2006 17:16

Opinion and Analysis

After seeing all the hype about the launch of Microsoft's Zune music player on the news here in Australia, my older son, who has an iPod Nano, walked into my study and asked when he could have a look at one. I told him probably sometime in 2008 or maybe near the end of 2007 if Microsoft gets its act together.

He looked at me incredulously and asked why. I explained that despite the global hype about the Zune and Zune Marketplace online store, the Zune is only available in the US and probably won't be rolled out anywhere else for a year or more.

OK then, he said, no problem, he would just check out the Zune store. Where is it again? www.zune.com right? Wrong! It appears someone else happened to get that domain ahead of Microsoft and all you get is a message in Spanish; "Listado de directorio denegado. Este directorio virtual no permite listar contenidos." Which roughly translated to English means: "Listing of denied directory This virtual directory does not allow to list contents." Thanks Babel Fish.

So to get to the official Zune site, you go to www.zune.net - a pretty basic site at this stage. Then to get to the Zune marketplace, you choose the appropriate link. Then you're ready to explore and browse the range of music right? Wrong?

The site reads: "To get into Zune Marketplace, you'll need to sign up for a free Zune account. There is an opportunity for you to sign up just after you set up the Zune software on your computer, but if you don’t do it then, you still have a chance. Just open the software, select Marketplace, click Sign In, click Create a new account, and follow the instructions."

So let's see, you've already got Windows Media Player on your computer, and a very good media player it is too. But Microsoft doesn't want you to use this to store your music and other media. For some reason, you must download the new Zune software and then import your music from Windows Media Player and iTunes (only the non Apple DRM stuff of course). Then you'll be able to visit this fabled music store called Zune Marketplace. Alright then, let's give it a go.

Well hello! It says that the Zune software is unable to detect my operating system. Yet, I'm running Windows XP Service Pack 2 and, according to the specs list provided by Microsoft for running the Zune software, my PC should be fine. I certainly had no trouble installing the latest Windows Media Player. I also just managed to install Apple iTunes 7 from scratch in about five minutes. But the Zune software can't detect my operating system!

Well at just about this stage, I think I'll wait it out a bit until Microsoft gets its Zune act together, because if I have to upgrade my PC just to get the Zune software to recognize my Microsoft operating system, I guess I'll have to wait until I buy a new PC before considering buying a Zune Player. I'm certainly not going to buy a Zune Player if I can't even access the Zune Marketplace.

Oh no! I just noticed on the Zune site that "Windows Vista is not supported at this time." Right at this moment, Microsoft's prediction that it may take as long as five years before Zune can make an impact in the music player space seems a tad optimistic. It looks like this Christmas, Zune might just very well end up being a music player without anybody playing or paying.