It will be interesting to see what happens with this - and will their be a zune phone

It’s going to be a long battle. At least prices will go down.

I personally think the Zune may have been priced to high. Priced slightly lower, it could have undercut the iPod and gained market share a lot quicker.

Keep in mind not too low, because then it would be seen as cheap.

J

Fasten your seat belts, Zune is about to launch!!!

Congratulations Microsoft on the launch of Newton 2.0!

Its mind boggling to me how microsoft just keeps on cloning other people’s ideas. 20 years and they still get away with it. I c’mon, just innovate, its not that hard!

Alex

I’m not sure how this will succeed. On the one hand, the wireless media sharing functionality is revolutionary. I’m sure it’s the reason MSFT thought they could go it alone. The whole marketing concept revolves around sharing and being social. The problem is, how many people are willing to be the early adopter. Who are they going to be able to share with? And by the time they make any headway, I suspect Apple will have this same functionality.

Go Apple!

Alex Iskold: Please elaborate your completely dumbfounding statement. That does not make one bit of sense.

If you think Apple came up with the idea of an mp3 player then you are wrong. Apple was the first one to do it right - ie simple enough for the average person to understand the concept. Also they have since added video and movies. Wow. iRiver had been doing it a lot longer before them.

So to say that Microsoft is cloning other peoples ideas when they have come out with ZUNE is pretty retarted to say it nicely. ZUNE is on a different scale to the iPod. It is something new and it is something that hasn’t been done before.

I am an iPod fan so I am not bias towards the ZUNE. I actually can’t wait for it to come out. I think they have come up with an interesting concept and it is only going to get cooler and cooler as time goes on - for both the ZUNE and iPod.

So please, back up your statements before making unjust allegations that clearly this time are wrong.

I don’t own an iPod but may consider getting a Zune just because it’s different and not an iPod that almost everyone owns. This is something MSFT should think about when they market Zune.

The “all you can eat” plan is something that makes it very attractive and something that itunes/ipod doesn’t offer, but its priced a bit too high I think, $14.95??? Try $9.95 or perhaps $6.95 like virgin and handful of other places and you could really have something.

I like my iPod but I’ve been waiting for an “all you can eat” plan in a cool device for sometime, I think it will be a big hit and force itunes to offer an “all you can eat” plan soon to stay competitive.

Ahem, the PSP can play games, videos, music, photos and surf the web, but specially it can share all its resources with another PSPer wirelessly. So, who is innovating again? M$ doesn’t innovate, period.

PSP, way ahead of its time.

People need to get use to idea of “borrowing” music rather than owning music.

I “borrow” music from my brother and friends all the time in MP3 format. If I like the music I buy the tracks and other songs from the same bands from iTunes, or on that rare occasion in CD format which I then rip.

What’s annoying about zune.net is the site loads fine in Safari and Firefox but they deliver a non-CSS version for the Camino browser.

zune could beat ipod

I’m reading in the above specifications Connectivity: with range of up to 30 feet. Should not that be 30 yards (or 30 meters, whatever comes first)?

Get a Zen Vision M or even the W! If you don’t want an Apple, the Zen is still much better than the Zune….

How come no one is mentioning how ugly this device looks in pictures? This may not be important for technies but most normal people go by the ‘look’ of the device.

Despite the better feature-set, Zune just doesn’t match up to the ‘look’ of the iPod. Zune looks like my 2-3 year old Casio E-125 Pocket PC aka ‘The Brick’.

I heard that if you see it in real life, it actually looks better than it does in photos.

Why do they use the CSS brazil band for advertisement (the flash header on top of the site, second fading image)? Is Microsoft or are their marketing experts aware that the CSS band logo looks pretty much like the SS (Schutzstaffel) sign of the German Third Reich?
compare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS

Good eye on the SS thing. Perhaps the similarity did not register, or perhaps a little controversy wouldn’t be a bad thing in their minds. Who knows?

Zune is my first mp3 player - bought the brown one - and am very happy with ease and quickness of loading some 1100 mp3’s - very easy to use. loaded some video shot with my sony dvr camera - looks very good. With minimal expectations, I’m okay with it so far - only real complaint is all the BS you have to go thru just to get going - the registration process was abhorrent and too personal - I was actually tempted to stop at that point and return the unit - but continued on. From what I’ve read over the years, I would imagine the iPod is very safe at the top of the heap, but for novices like me - and totally pc based, Zune seems okay for my needs.

After debating with myself weather or not to get a new mp3 player after my dell dj batter life became 10 mins i decided to go for it. I work at circuit city and I am going to be purchasing our protection plan on it because our protection plan covers dropping the mp3 player, which i know will happen daily. so all scratches will be covered :). Battery life is also covered so in 1-2 years when the protection plan is nearly up i’ll be saying hello to a free new 2nd maybe even 3rd generation zune.