First look at Microsoft Zune

The popular Zune player, portable video player has just made a big buzz in the market. After a few hours of searching, I was really impressed with this handset, but the hardware is less, mostly about software.

Physically, the Zune lacks the splendid jewels like the iPod: no shiny gold plating, unbelievably sensitive buttons, a little bigger and a bit more square-shaped. The Zune previously mimicked the rigid ' I-must-use-this- design' model, with no outstanding features of the iPod appearing only once. Say no, it's really a monotonous and boring imitation. The current Zune is like an iPod in a Tupperware box.

Zune
Manufacturer : Microsoft Corp.
Website : www.zune.net
Price : $ 249
Summary : is Microsoft's effort to dominate the market for music devices.
Characteristics : strong software, weak design, quite clumsy but over time will be better.There are some additional features such as capturing radio waves, beautiful bright videos.

Zune has a center console wheel like the iPod but smaller. Five buttons to move (left, right, top, bottom and center) in black plastic disc are not obvious. It looks like there will be an extra chip outside the border in the next four or five months. The five buttons in the circle should not be used as much as the two additional buttons on the right and left of the center. They carry out almost every heavy transformation.

Zune's operating interface makes people feel more complicated than iPod. There will be times when you right-click the ' Up ' button, reopen the list above while you should click the ' Back ' button. Or sometimes when you just want to click on the button, you press and hold it. Zune does not have the ability to scroll the list easily with the scroll pointer like the iPod or the mouse pointer like on the BlackBerry.

The screen is twice as big as the standard iPod, bright and beautiful. Microsoft designers must have a lot of inspiration from 'sweet eye' bags and include it in all Zune activities.

Some basic points

Each time the focus shifted from hardware to software, Zune stopped looking like an iPod lock. But Zune has some features that iPod does not have, like capturing radio waves, streaming songs and images between Zune together.

First look at Microsoft Zune Picture 1

Microsoft Zune

Zune is also equipped with some basic features like any other music player. Of course it runs songs, videos, . with quite a large capacity. Microsoft claims that the Zune's running limit is 14 hours, but in fact it is only about 8 to 10 hours. That was a lot.

Zune has the ability to hold large amounts of music. Microsoft did not say exactly how much the Zune hard drive was, but at least 27.7 GB or more. In addition to songs, photos - videos are also allowed to be stored in Zune. If there are 1,600 MP3 files from 130 albums on the computer that are nearly 8GB, then on Zune is only 6.09 GB. Data compression on Zune is quite powerful.

Sounds good, but this evaluation is subjective, depending on many external factors such as headphones and earphones. Radio waves are clear and static. Zune video is also good: bright and detailed makes you feel like looking at a 2.5-inch screen that is like a 1.5-inch screen. Eye-catching photo system. (But the albums are quite horrible because they are very small, the files are compressed too much). Both audio and video are smooth, not jerky or temporarily stopped. You can force the audio tracks to jump alternately by turning on / off wireless mode while the music is playing. But must set the mode: when running, the playback program must also work.

Zune - Software

There are some surprising points in the ability to integrate between Zune and Vista . There is no ' Convert to Zune ' button in the new Media Center application and Photo Gallery of the new operating system. And while Zune transfers music to Xbox360, but Vista does not. People pay more attention to the software component of this portable music device. Horizontal scroll bars are very similar to another Microsoft product: Media Center application in Windows Vista. The screen is larger, the colors are diverse, making the iPod's simple black and white interface obsolete even when they are easier to read in low light conditions.

Overall, Zune's music player software is less features than iPod. Not only are things that no one uses, such as Contact and Calendar, but also lack of small details such as the ability to adjust the speed of playback of audio book files or the ability to balance with a large variety of settings.

Zune's desktop software is definitely not behind the iPod. If you set up iTunes, use it to put music on an iPod - a big challenge. But for Zune it is nothing. Insert the CD into the computer, it will install the software, search for music files in the hard drive (it reads MP3, WMA, AAC formats; it is like iPod, the default AAC file type) and Give you to load or 'sync' to Zune.

Zune application requires running on Windows platform.You cannot install it on OS X or Linux.Sadly, Windows 2000 or earlier versions of Windows cannot run Zune.Only the current operating system, Windows XP is available for it

The third component in the Zune system is the storage component called Zune Marketplace, where you can download music and videos. But so far, this feature has not been put into operation. Zune technical advice says it has some server issues. It is known that this part is a bit different from iTunes. In iTunes, you can buy music tracks in a one-time fee and have full access to it as a private property: copy to many other machines, burn to CD, . But Zune limits the version management function. weight. You can order long term in Marketplace, pay monthly fees, download music as much as you want, but don't own them. You cannot copy songs or photos, downloaded videos. And if you stop paying, your long-term contract stops immediately.

It will be interesting to see if Zune's confrontation of a "rent instead of a buy" model finds its place in this area, when the flashy appearance of the iPod takes up 90% of the market. portable media school. If you have never seen an iPod, are you impressed by Zune? May. But many people will choose Zune, because it's simply a Microsoft product. In the minds of many Microsoft people is always number one so naturally Zune will be better. The correct answer is really still ahead. Let's just wait and see!