Microsoft Zune 80GB

The Microsoft Zune 80 is the Zune 30's bigger brother. It plays MP3, WMV, WMA, MP4 music and video files, displays JPEG pictures and has an FM tuner, but its real value is its truly whopping 80GB hard disk which can hold my entire music library and several full length films. It also supports wireless connection to your home network and can transfer music wirelessly to nearby Zune users (with restrictions) should you have the urge so to do. Given ...
...a nice change for a Microsoft offering. The screen shows a big picture of any album art associated with a piece of music, and you can fast forward through a piece with the 'squircle' button. You can also lock the machine using a slide button at the top edge, either when running (to ensure your song list isn't interrupted with accidental button pushes) or when turned off (to ensure it isn't accidentally turned on).

The 3.2-inch video ... more

The Microsoft Zune 80 is the Zune 30's bigger brother. It plays MP3, WMV, WMA, MP4 music and video files, displays JPEG pictures and has an FM tuner, but its real value is its truly whopping 80GB hard disk which can hold my entire music library and several full length films. It also supports wireless connection to your home network and can transfer music wirelessly to nearby Zune users (with restrictions) should you have the urge so to do. Given that there are few Zune users in the UK, this latter facility is currently of little value.

The device itself is light and neat, with a metal back and a clear glass front sporting only three buttons, each of which is overloaded with context dependent functions that take a little while to get used to. The central 'squircle' button (i.e. a squarish-circle) is the Zune's answer to the ipod 'wheel' and can be used for navigation by either clicking on one of its virtual compass points or just running your finger over it in the direction you want and the song list in the screen above scrolls off as if connected to it via a flywheel, slowing down over time. You tap on the centre to select. It is quiet in operation, the hard disk only making the slightest 'chunk' sound when started. The front window is very easy to smudge, but fortunately just as easy to clean with a dry cloth (or the shirt I happen to be wearing, in my case). The device seems fairly robust, although I have treated it with a great deal of care since I got it.

The battery cannot be accessed without dismantling the machine and is charged through the USB cable you use to synchronise the Zune with your PC. Since rechargeable batteries degrade over time, I'm not sure what you are supposed to do when they finally pack in. The batteries are supposed to last for up to 30 hours of music before a recharge is needed, but I haven't tested this yet.

The operating system starts off clearly, with a list of big words such as 'music', 'videos', 'settings' etc but once you drill down into the music library it is not difficult to get lost amongst albums, genres or song lists until you figure out how to navigate your way around, but once you do, it's easy. So far, the OS seemed completely stable, which was a nice change for a Microsoft offering. The screen shows a big picture of any album art associated with a piece of music, and you can fast forward through a piece with the 'squircle' button. You can also lock the machine using a slide button at the top edge, either when running (to ensure your song list isn't interrupted with accidental button pushes) or when turned off (to ensure it isn't accidentally turned on).

The 3.2-inch video screen was big, clear and bright, with only slight shearing on the edges of moving images which didn't affect my enjoyment of the picture. Videos are shown sideways to ensure the aspect ration is reasonable, as the screen is longer than it is wide. Note that importing recorded TV relies on a PC running the Media Center application that comes with some versions of MS Vista. Given the occasional (but not Zune-related) problems that I and many others have had with Vista, I would recommend thinking very hard about whether its worth upgrading to Vista just so you can use the Media Center.

The Zune 80 has no graphic equalizer controls, which might make control freaks a little jumpy, but as the sound quality through the earphones is very good anyway there is little need for them.

The FM tuner seems merely OK; its reception seems poor and fluttery in comparison with my other radios. It takes advantage of the RBDS text service transmitted with FM channels and you get a display of the channel name and programme.

I installed the Zune software on an Athlon PC running MS Windows Vista Ultimate without any problems (a new version 2.3 has just been released). The device itself has had no problems synchronising with the PC via USB 2, and can also do so via unencrypted wireless. It is supposed to be able to do so via WEP or WPA encrypted wireless also, but I can't get this to work.

Annoyances
----------------

The item is not officially for sale in the UK. I bought mine from an ebay reseller who presumably made a recent trip to the USA.

I'm a techie, and I really like to know what software is doing to my PC; not so much out of curiosity, but out of suspicion. Zune have this itunes-like application that you MUST use to synchronise your PC music library with your Zune. Like many Microsoft offerings, its general design approach is to look pretty whilst 'doing stuff' that you needn't worry your pretty little head about. Why can't I just copy music over onto a mounted drive like I could with my old Archos recorder? There is no technical reason, its just MS doesn't want me to. There is a registry hack available that presents your Zune as a mountable drive, but I haven't got it to work yet, and is not recommended to non-technical users.

I was taken aback when I realised that the Zune was unable to read the MS proprietary dvr-ms video file that the MS Vista Media Center writes. The Zune synchronisation application converts these files to something more digestible before transferring them over, taking a long time doing it, and audio-only dvr-ms files (recorded from radio over DVB-T, for instance) do not playback on the Zune, although they get converted and transferred. This speaks of simply appalling software design or implementation, although it is no more than a minor annoyance to me as I mostly listen to my own MP3s.

I'll be damned if I can get the wireless synchronisation to work over my WPA secure network, and I'm not going to downgrade my wireless network's security to accommodate the Zune. However, this could be a technical failing on my part.

Summary
------------
The Zune was a major improvement over my five-year old Archos Jukebox, which itself was a major improvement over the portable CDs and tape players I had been previously using. Given the huge capacity, I no longer have to edit my portable music library to fit, and the video replay is very useful for those times stuck in airports and railway stations. It also compares favourably with the equivalent ipod. However, it is flawed, and some of these flaws seem intentional own goals. It does its job well, but it doesn't make me gasp in admiration. Perhaps I'm a technological spoilt brat, but I expect *no* wrinkles for my money.

Links
------
http://www.zune.net/en-US/products/zune80gb/defaul t.htm
http://www.zunescene.co m/80gb-zune/ 

...less