Well, the ever-lovely Mrs. W got me an engraved 80 gig Zune for Christmas. I guess she got tired of those 2 gig Sansas we’ve been living with for the past few years and decided to drag me into the 21st century, kicking and screaming. Gotta love that woman.
I’ve been learning how to use and appreciate this beast since then, with mixed results. First off, the good stuff.
I now have forty times the capacity of my old unit! That’s hard to argue with.
The sound, with Grado SR-80s, is fantastic. Better than the Sansas.
The graphics are neat. It’s nice to see the album cover and all pertinent info at a glance on a well-lit screen. The Sansa a line of scrolling text on a hard-to read screen.
Now, the other stuff.
It’s bigger and klunkier than the Sansa, but with the graphics and storage capacity I’d say that’s an acceptable tradeoff.
The earplugs look kewl, what with the cloth wrapped wires and selection of covers to fit any ear, but they sure sound awful! But, that’s the norm with these devices, no?
There is no hint about how to operate the dang thing. They just say go to the website. This is good since you need to connect the Zune to the computer to activate it. You first need to load the Zune media player (which is like a more comprehensive WMP) and then plug in the unit to activate it.
With the Sansa, you just plugged it into a USB port and went to WMP and you were good to go, Everything was fairly intuitive.
Oh. still no instructions. A brief blurb somewhere in the included “quick start” pamphlet on how to turn it on and off would have been nice.
This thing advertises a built-in “radio”, which was a major decision in wifey’s purchase of this over an ipod. (that, and she doesn’t like itunes). And, it does have a radio, sort-of. When I go to the radio function and scan up the “dial”, it does lock into some known frequencies and, in some cases. displays some station info (Call letters and genre).
But, and this is where it gets good, or bad, depending. THERE WAS NO SOUND! Just a hiss.
I thought it was broken so I checked the instructions, which are hidden on the Zune website only to find out that you need to subscribe to these “free” radio stations. Now, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I’ve always believed that OTA radio was free for the asking, no? We travel and don’t always have access to the NY stations. I guess I’m supposed to subscribe to the Texas stations too.
Major score FOR the Sansa here. Free radio is free there. Just tune to the station and you’re off and running. That’ll still be in our travel kit, you betcha.
Likewise, the Sansa may well be the chosen companion for the car. I can easily hold it in my right hand and use my thumb to skip songs while driving. This will be more of a task with the Zune. Ergonometricly, I think the Sansa wins here.
All in all, it’s a mixed bag. Sometimes letting go of the old ways is hard, but when you have to pay for “free” radio, something is wrong.
