The Zune. Wow. That company is so full of hate towards whatever it thinks may be any sort of competition that it takes it out on its customers by coming up with this contraption. I have an AMD Phenom 9500 Quad on a generic MoBo. I ripped Vista off the thing shortly after getting it because it ran like garbage. Put linux on it, and now I have a dream machine.

My dad has a good machine that’s a couple years older than mine, and we took Vista off of it for the same reason. Now, he has a dream machine.

So, he gets the Zune. Now we have a WMD (Windows Media Device?) with 120G drive that only plays one video and has some free lance splash art on it.

I had an old XP SP2 disk (yes, and the proper key) and set about making the Zune useful.

What a nightmare!! XP was written for single core processors, and is forbidden by its writers to function on anything else. XP fried a hard drive when I tried to make it a USB boot device. (These installs are easily done in Linux by the way. No matter what flavor you choose.) The USB boot device was a measure of last resort because XP refused to use the hardware after making a flawless install.

Finally I opted to try puting it on a computer from 1996. Intel P3 S1 550Mhz. It had Linux on it as well, and is used as a backup computer. I had to rummage through parts to find a configuration that XP could work with (nightmare). As always, Linux was working beautifully with what was already there.

I finally got XP installed. Ever tried installing a Dell version of XP on a Gateway MoBo? What a pain. The Zune Software is shoddy at best. If a file is out of place during the first sync, you have to sync three more times just to set it right. There’s no way of organizing files on the Zune. There’s no way of modifying play lists directly from the Zune. You can’t directly manage files on the Zune unless you tweak your registry and hope that tweak doesn’t crash your system. You have to install about a dozen overbloated programs just to add a game to the Zune. MacroShaft has never fixed their device grab and release problems, so good luck trying to sync twice in less that 10 minutes without hanging the device manager and having to reboot. (Especially when you sync via wireless.) The only upgrades available to the Zune customers are what MacroShaft wants you to have. (Aside from a weak game scripting software package that is a poor attempt of a hack off of visual C++) Programs written for one version of OS on the Zune are not compatible with any other. Battery life stinks. Shall I continue?

Linux, help save us from this madness!!

Or better yet, Let’s clobber us a jolly bearded maniac. 8-) Y’all be cool.

I dont want to have to convert my media to put it in my zune which converts it again anyway….. :(

Help this lossless fanatic and the millions in other lurking in the lossless realm.

I bought a Zune, but I don’t hold any ill feelings toward the iPod. The iPod is, and has been, a great device that has revolutionized the industry. You just don’t sell 100 million iPod’s if they totally suck.

The fact of the matter is that there is a bandwagon of “I hate Microsoft” people that will hate everything that Microsoft creates. That, along with racism, sexism, etc, will never change. If the Zune was released with the ability to make you 6’ 3” tall and bring back dead relatives, there would still be a group of people that would complain that they wanted to be 6’ 4” tall or that they hate all there dead relatives and would never use that feature.

The Zune is Microsoft’s first attempt at a device that is in direct competition with the iPod. I think they did a great job on the initial product, and I hope that they will continue to release firmware adding functionality that matters to me in the future (not holding my breath). I am happy with the product I bought… for now, but if I want a feature they don’t add, I am not against going to Linux to get the features I want. I long since did the same with most of the computers in my house.