Rated 
Great player with some of the most atrocious software ever......
Started Dec 12, 2007
Strengths: Great Player w/ ample HD space, Great interface, Huge Screen, Wifi capability w/ wireless sync, Radio Tuner, Touchpad interface improvement, ZUNE originals!
Weaknesses: Horrendous software, Click Wheel is still a better interface
After using my 5th Generation iPod's screen stopped working just a little above 1 year (conveniently out of warranty) I decided that I didn't want to buy another apple product for my next mp3 player. The Zune 2 had just come out and the 80GB of space was quite appealing (upgrade from 30GB) and the player seemed rather improved from the first Bricky Zune. After testing the interface in the store and checking the size I was quite convinced this would be my next mp3 player. What really sealed the deal was the Zune Originals offer from MS that allowed you to laser etch a custom picture from a set # of artists onto the back of the player.
So I waited anxiously for my Zune (shipped direct from the factory in China). When it arrived the player was solid as expected and the interface was smooth..... And then everything went downhill from there. I started by simply installing the Zune software and when that was done I selected my music folders. First thing I noticed was that the ways to manipulate the sorting were incredibly limited compared to ITunes. You couldn't sort by priorities (like Album> Artist). So I either had to choose between browsing artists (where the albums would be scatted around) or by album (where the artists were scattered throughout the whole list). To top things off in browse mode, things are jumbled in the album view where it splinters off albums if you have various artists or feat. artists in a single album... Not great. Of course this could be overcome by a simple search right? Nope... the search function is horrible and non-interactive. It's not even close to as smooth as the itunes search and from the search page you cannot sync songs directly from there. Either way it makes organizing any collection a complete pain. Second off the Zune doesn't double as a portable HD if you need it while the Ipod does. And third, I often bring my mp3 player to work to play music on my PC (since my work PC has limited HD Space). For some obscure reason the Zune software does not play songs directly off your Zune unless you copy them to your HD collection first (defeating the purpose of doing it in the first place).
It really upsets me that Microsoft had a great chance to take a customer away from Apple's Ipod reign and completely screwed it up with horrible software. I wanted to enjoy the zune but it's just been a miserable experience so far that I can't recommend to anyone (esp since it's about the same price as the ipod classic). Sure, things might improve in the future and the software might be updated, but I wouldn't buy this player and bank on that. I'm even tempted now to sell my Zune at a loss on ebay and go buy another iPod so I can use Itunes again (which I don't particularly like all that much to begin with). I could go on about the positive aspects like the wireless sync and the social aspect, but really it's all just overshadowed by pure un-useability..... It's sad how they didn't even get the fundamentals correct with the software. Here's to hopping for an improvement (and I'll update my review if one comes).
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