I was devoted to Palm for sometime, until WinMo better served my needs. I used IE exclusively, until it got too performance hungry for day to day use, so now I use mainly Firefox. I was a year zero Mac user (if you can’t do it on a 128K machine, it don’t need to be done) but have become mainly a Windows user, though I am adding a Linux machine to a houseful of XP and Vista a a few weeks.

However, I took an oath ages ago to never use an iPod. Why? Too many otherwise intelligent people telling me I was somehow uncool not to have an iPod while they worshipped at the Cult of mac without question or budgetary constraints. Too many others insulted my sense/gadget knowledge/musical tastes/manhood for resisting the call of the white earpods. The greatest positive for an iPod is often it’s fans, the greatest negative is also it’s fans. In my experience, the negative of that factor has outweighed the postive.

It helps that I like the look and feel of the Zune and find the software slow and resource heavy yet have experienced none of the troubles ctitanic has, but the fact is I have owned mp3 players from Creative, iRiver, SanDisk and Microsoft…and I will never ever own an iPod. I am very very happy with my Zune 2 and am content to stay that way. If I ever cease to be happy with it, I will look elsewhere for a music player, just not to Apple.

Maybe I just think different. You got a problem with that?

Z

Zune software is buggy and sucks a lot more resources than iTunes. That’s not what I dreamed for a program coming from Microsoft. And I’m really disappointed. But the fact that I’m saying all this tells that I believe in Zune as one of the best mp3 players in the market and I would love to see it being the best.

When version 2 was released every single user claimed for having the smart play list back and it took more than 6 month to have that little and simple screen designed and implemented. I’m a bad and lazy developer, I confess, but that screen and what is behind is just a few days of work for one developer, for a team is just a matter of hours.

Jason, I meant to say “Does Not”. To me it’s like the Zune team are not listening to you either to the whole community.

To me the biggest error was to release the version 2 when it was not ready at all. Just because they wanted to release the the new Zune devices with that new but not ready version of the program.

Jack, I already have an iPod. But I want Zune to be a really competition to iPod.

Both iTunes and Zune software are great, but itunes is more mature and has more features. But Zune Software is a great Media Player that is constaly being improved with new features.

It kind of seems like you’re insulting the Zune MVPs when you say this:

“Now they put it back but again… It’s buggy! Come on! Does the Zune team have a group of MVP helping them to tune their program?”

Did you mean to put the word “not” in there? Or are you saying that the MVPs are making the Zune software worse? That seems to be what you’re saying, but that would be incredibly rude, so I thought I’d ask for clarification first before expressing my opinion. :-)

Jason Dunn
Zune Thoughts
http://www.zunethoughts.com

That said, I DO agree with Frank that the Zune sucks resource like a strip miner with a quota to fil. T take ages to load and while syncing, nothing else moves.

If I wanted anything from the Zune team (beside bluetooth, 3G wifi and multiple album art per album) it would be a lighter software version with fewer features but faster loadout, for those days I just don’t feel as fresh.

Z

I have to disagree a bit Frank. I think the new software is a joy to use. Besides the Playlist complaint, what else?

Let me know and I will relay back to the Zune team. I really have a good feeling about them. They are much more responsive to MVP and Community feedback than the Windows Mobile team.