Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

With Apple having sold 60 million iPods in the last 5 years, it's no wonder Microsoft felt it was necessary to go head-to-head with the iPod. Unfortunately, Zune is largely a tentative, half-baked effort. Despite the vast marketing campaign, prospective buyers should realize several important points about the Zune that isn't readily apparent in the advertisements. 1) Zune does not work with music bought from other Microsoft-backed stores like Napster and MTV's Urge. 2) The Zune's screen is physically larger, but has exactly the same resolution as the iPod: 320x240 pixels. You don't see more of anything - everything is just blown up to a larger size which can result in a larger but fuzzier image. 3) A lot of reviews like to quote how the Zune's battery life is "comparable" to the iPod. Unfortunately for Zune, it's only comparable when you compare it to the 30 GB iPod, which is significantly smaller and lighter than the Zune. The Zune's 14 hours of music playback doesn't look so impressive when compared to the 80 GB iPod, which is still physically smaller and lighter than the Zune. The 80 GB iPod plays 20 hours of music on a full charge and 6 hours of video, vastly outlasting the Zune. You could play the 80 GB iPod at work almost a full work day (minus lunch) and still have about the same battery life as a fully charged Zune. 4) The Zune doesn't contain a lot of extras that are standard fare on the iPod. There's no Contacts, no Calendar, no Alarm Clock, no Sleep Timer, no Games (Tetris, Texas Hold 'Em Poker, PacMan, etc), no Screen Lock to prevent others from accessing your iPod's information without knowing your combination. 5) Zune does not support Audible Audiobooks. 6) You cannot share videos with Zune, only music. 7) There is no bookmarking feature - Zune will not remember if you stopped playing a song in the middle. The iPod will resume playing songs or audiobooks (see #5) at the point you stopped them. 8) Zune cannot be used as a external hard disk. The iPod can be used as a portable hard drive, which is handy for storing Word documents or other data (even application installers). 9) Songs purchased in the Zune marketplace involves buying Microsoft "points" at the rate of 400 points for $5.00. Since songs cost 79 points (not $0.99 cents), if you buy 1 song, Microsoft gets to hold 321 points or $4.01 of your money in an interest-bearing account until you decide to use them. In effect, consumers are giving Microsoft thousands of interest-free micro loans. And with songs costing 79 points (a prime number), it is practically impossible to buy songs in a way where you can use up all your points. The system is designed to ALWAYS result in left-over points, which is basically unredeemed cash that Microsoft can take to the bank. It's not enough for Microsoft to make money by actually selling you a song - they need to make money off the money you don't (i.e. can't) spend at the Zune store because they priced songs at such a uneven number like 79 points. 10) Microsoft is giving Universal Music a cut for every Zune sold, on the premise that owners of MP3 players have tons of stolen music that Universal will never get paid for. Basically, even if all your music comes legally purchased from the Zune music store or ripped from music CDs that you bought, you are basically agreeing to pay a "stolen music" tax to Universal. Given all these compromises, does a Zune's wireless sharing really seem all that appealing to you? After all, in order to share songs, you need to find another Zune user. I suspect that event will occur only slightly more frequently than winning the lottery for quite a while, which basically makes the wireless feature worthless. To put it another way, it might be cool to be the first person on the block with a telephone, but the excitement will die quickly when you realize there's no one to call.