I've played with Microsoft's Zune and it's nothing special - yet

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 27 November 2006 17:04

Your IT - Entertainment

Microsoft’s Zune is meant to herald their arrival in the music space with a device designed to compete with Apple’s iPod. While the Zune is functional, it’s definitely no iPod.

With no Zunes available in Australia until sometime in 2007 or even 2008, the only way to get my hands on a Zune beyond going to the US is to come across  someone that has one, and today I was lucky enough to do just that – an industry colleague had one brought to Australia by a friend who had just returned from the USA.

It was especially lucky because Microsoft Australia said they didn’t have one, so the Zune is something I’ve really wanted to see, hold in my hands and play with, even if only briefly as was the case tonight – although it was more than enough time to share information and get a good initial impression. After all, you don’t get a second chance for a first impression.

Still, I’d certainly like to play with one again for longer, just to see all the little things Microsoft have done with the system to see how they’ve implemented all of the features compared with all brands of competing mp3 players, not just the iPod.

So, onto the Zune itself. It certainly seems larger than the svelte 30Gb iPod, with a much more boxy look – dare I say that I’m thinking 80’s Volvo? The iPod wins in the cool design stakes, even a year after the release of the current slim model.

Zune’s retro blast into the past is alleviated somewhat by the rather lovely big screen, which had a much nicer and more graphical operating system with background images if desired, instead of the iPod’s white screen.

My colleague reports that video on the Zune is much nicer to look at on the Zune’s larger screen, even if it is at the same resolution and is therefore being stretched by half a inch from the iPod’s 2.5-inch screen to the Zune’s 3-incher. A bigger screen is almost always a very good thing.

The Zune’s menus do look more advanced than the iPod’s more basic menus which I believe are essentially unchanged, save for the higher resolution font and more menu entries, from the original iPod all those years ago.

I say that not to damn the iPod’s interface, but to praise it: it’s actually a validation of how good the iPod’s menu system has been for all of these years, even if Creative did develop it first, which Apple paid Creative money to settle.