essxjay

"What color is your Zune, dude?"

"Brown!"

"Oh! Uhh, ... cool .... "

ScottC

Amazingly, some of the reviewers that saw it in real life thought the brown was indeed pretty cool looking...

SEA_Tigger

If it worked with a Mac, I'd consider it, but since it doesn't, I'll just wait for the 3.5" video iPod.

cj001f

It's all up to the software. A device I could plop down (no cabling) that would autosync itself has appeal - I've got somewhere north of 8 USB cables that can/do connect, I would love to reduce that number. Future connectivity wise the idea of a personal digital repository that would wirelessly interact with entertainment centers has appeal. I do not think this functionality will be there.

ScottC

Would it REALLY? Is it really that inconvenient to plop the device in a cradle? I've had a WiFi mp3 player before, and it really wasn't all that impressive.

I agree that in the future Wireless connectivity may add something nice, but at the current stage I just don't see it.

There are many things they can do with this player, but somehow I suspect each time they'll do it, Apple will just do a better job of it.

cj001f

I interface with 4-6 computers a day (home, office, labs) - I either have to shell out for more cradles/docks or drag a cable along if I want to access my media at every one of those computers. That's a royal PIA - WIFI really would be valuable to me.

As I said, I don't think my desired functionality from WIFI will be there.

Xyzzy

WiFi is a lot slower than a cable. How long is it going to take to upload many megabytes of stuff to one of these things?

ScottC

To me the future is in WiMax, 3G or EVDO in one of these. A good example of a company that gets it is Amazon, their leaked E-book reader has EVDO and downloads the books you order. I could see a new player in 3-5 years that simply downloads the music you purchased. WiFi is still a PITA to configure, it barely works when you need a public AP and configuring it (security keys etc...) for multiple locations is quite an undertaking (entering a 128bit WEP key using a d-pad will be fun on Zune).

With broadband wireless heading towards the 4mbit range it won't be long till you can download an entire album OTA in 10 minutes. I'd love to grab my player in the morning and have new music on it, podcasts delivered and perhaps some video content (news etc...). WMP was meant to deliver this experience but failed.

PTravel

Does anyone else use an MP3 player the way that I do?

- I listen to it mostly when I'm flying, occassionally when I have insomnia and don't want to wake my wife.

- I might, occassionally, take a movie or two with me on a trans-Pacific or intercontinental flight. My laptop, however, is a much better movie-viewing device.

- I own my music -- it's all from my CD collection, and I listen to the CDs at home (as well as stream the mp3s to my audio system).

- I have no interest in downloading music, whether or not for a fee, nor am I interested in podcasts of either the audio or video variety.

- I have no interest in sharing music with anyone, I don't care how other people rate music, I'm not interested in the latest popular hit.

- I do like to carry around my entire music collection, so I'm only interested players with large hard drives.

- My mp3 player is a life saver on long flights, so long battery life is critical.

It's clear that player designers don't have people like me in mind -- things like wifi, syncing to on-line download services, etc. are useless to me. On the other hand, only the iPod has a 22-hour battery life (Creative's Jukebox 3, no longer manufactured, had a 24-hour battery life).

I'm curious if the player manufacturers are missing out on a significant, though perhaps not huge, market demographic that is not composed of young people who view music as a social networking tool, i.e. tired business person frequent flyers.

DavidNZ

Hah! I usually agree with everything else you say, Scott, except this.

I'll stick with my Sony HD5, RH1 Minidisc, and Shure E4C IEMs. Nothing beats *that*, IMHO, although will be interesting to read some field tests of the Zune when it comes out...

DavidNZ

Actually, PT, that's me to a tee as well, save for the movie-viewing on flights. We've probably been on the same flights at some point. Fully agree that it's a separate market segment, although I wonder just how big it is.

I've actually found that the best investment for me has been the Shure E4C IEMs, which I picked up last year in Singapore. They work great in the kinds of situations you and I are in (where audiophile quality isn't really an issue). Much better, in my opinion, than active noise cancelling phones; instead, these strive for isolation.

ScottC

For years I was a Minidisc fan, every trip I took to Tokio or HKG would have me returning with an even smaller and even better MD player/recorder, but since the only one that let me put mp3's on it was Sony, and since their software turned out to be the most worthless bit of crap ever programmed I gave up on them.

Actually... Back in 2003 I even recommended them to people...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...light=minidisc

If only Sony had made the right choices and improved their software AND made a decent PC based MD player/recorder drive it may have been more of a success. FWIW; I recently sold my last MD player on Ebay, I put it up, and 5 minutes later someone did a BIN on it, so there is still plenty of demand for them

cj001f

That's the functionality I'm looking for! Wireless - so if I say left the player in the car, it would still update, would be perfect.

What I'd love to see - and would be willing to pay for - would be a customizable 20-30 minutes audio news program for my commute. Have the player download it in the morning before work and in the afternoon before I leave work.

DavidNZ

Hmmm... I think I actually remember that post... nice blast from the past.

If your collection is primarily mp3, I agree (although not to put words in your mouth) that there is little reason to move to the Sony environment - at least not fully. Sony and mp3 do have a tenuous relationship now, though, in that you can use SonicStage to transfer raw mp3s to new(ish) devices. ATRAC, I'm convinced, is really for those, like me, with extensive CD collections who want that music on the go. Like PTravel's post above, I don't buy or download music, but am starting to think there are less and less of these kinds of people, especially with the Zune music store, iTunes, Spiral Frog, and all that. I generally buy a LOT of used CDs (wonder why the RIAA doesn't get into a stink about that? The artists don't get royalties, AFAIK, and if both a used and a new version are available, guess which one I go for?) and then rip them using SonicStage.

Speaking of which, I've been using SonicStage since version 2.5. I'm now using version 3.4 and I haven't had a single problem with it in the (almost) year I've used it. wwwDoesn't crash, doesn't hog the system, extracts/rips to ATRAC 3+ quickly, and has a great backup tool.

It may not look as pretty as iTunes, but it (because of ATRAC) for years has supported two of the key 'new' features of the new iPods that Mac fanatics have been praising: 1) gapless and 2) instant search (Sony's is called, I think, initial search).

I think most people had trouble with SS (and some still do) because of the other crap on their machines. For instance, it's known to not play well with those fancy shell interfaces that make your XP box look like Vista.

Even more intriguing is that my three-year-old minidisc player has a longer battery life than the new generation iPods. Not nearly the space, mind you. I'm a huge Sony Fanboy, admittedly, but the more I think about it I'm more of an MD- or ATRAC-fanboy.

JohnnyP

It looks fairly thick too:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...age021_low.jpg