10 Gallon Hat I can’t believe I ate the whole thing

Zune 80 Review: "Don’t Call Me Radio, Unit 91."

As I mentioned last week, I finally broke down and replaced my old workhorse iRiver H340 which had to be the most durable player ever made. I had dropped that thing several times while playing and it never skipped or froze, ever. However, it had its laundry list of problems.

Enough about that, my new Zune Original arrived on Monday, two days early! Never hurts to get a surprise package. I was quite satisfied with my Super Troopers reference and the appropriate Jam Box logo.

So, with as much lipstick applied to the Zune’s shiny exterior, I wondered if it would all be a distraction from what was really going on.

I fired it up for the first time and the battery was mostly charged, which is a huge plus. I didn’t have to wait the standard 1-8 hours to play with my new toy. 

 

The first plug-in of the device causes the Zune software to  prompt you  for mandatory updates and then causes several restarts, relatively harmless and quick.

I have about 3500 songs that required uploading, and I was super excited to watch it chug through the sync process since my iRiver H340 never had a working Sync feature – no matter how many times I tried….

Sadly, for reasons unknown the Zune didn’t make it through in one shot.  It got song #2211 and from then on out was on a Zune themed lunch break. Every song the software attempted to send to the player, would fail for “Reasons Unknown” – yikes.   Better luck next time.

Anyways – I stayed calm and let the zune software  error for the last 1300 or so failed attempts at transfering a file.

Once it finished – I followed the troubleshooting steps and unplugged my Zune, shutdown the software, shutdown the Zune, and finally reconnected my Zune. 

I am happy to report this time around it did finish syncing although the numbers in the Device Status screen on the Zune software page were way off…. oh well. I later added a few podcasts and everything works great! All said and done I think it took about 2 hours to do the initial sync.

There are too many variables here to blame just the Zune for the problem I encountered, could have been my computer or perhaps the weather. Who knows, so as long as it doesn’t happen again, I will assume it was just that the initial sync was so large.

I setup wireless sync next and that worked first try – just had to enter my router credentials in the Zune software and I was on my way.

Everything else works as advertised. I like the “Squircle” control a lot. It takes a few swipes to get used to the sensitivity, but makes browsing through my library of songs a breeze.

The screen is beautiful for watching Video Podcast clips of “The Soup”. The quality and resolution are fantastic and the screen is surprisingly bright.

The headphones are really clear and crisp. The magnetic backs make storing them really nice since the cords won’t tangle. Not to mention the braided cable!

I haven’t encountered the problem with the Zune turning off at random (due to static electricity). There is an issue with battery life in stand-by, but it is easily avoided by turning the Zune off each time you are done using it. (Hold down on the squircle and hold the back button for 5 seconds).  It takes about 4 extra seconds for the Zune to come back on next time, but saves ‘yer battery.