So Jason... You like, you don't? Do tell. Looks nice and clean from the shots. What is up with the trapazoidal, triangular, prizmatic thingy on the back. WE DEMAND ANSWERS!!!

ipods look all nice and clean to, but we all know what happens once you drive it off the lot.

that thing on the back is a Z. you gotta look hard at it. and no, i'm not bs'ing you to waste ur time trying to see something that's no there, trust me, it is.

As an Apple Cultist, I must admit that that rubberised finish looks extremely mint.

It must get dirty and off-colour quite quickly though.

Oh, and Grifter, that trapezoidal, triangular, prismatic thingy on the back is the Zune logo itself.

grifter, the "trapazoidal, traiangular, prizmatic thingy on the back" is the Z, or ZUNE

from the looks of it, to me, its still just another iPod rip-off, the iPod started the hard-drive player market, and its gonna stay king!

What is with the Ipod Backlash?? They are great machines!

What is with the IPOD backlash??? Its a great machine!

It's more impressive than I thought. I want one and I don't know why.

@Rob C
I think the Creative Nomad Jukebox started the hard drive player market.

Oh my god that looks sweet.. just ordered mine off of Amazon... How sweet it is, been waiting for someone to make something that I could get instead of an ipod.. Never thought Microsoft would be the company to make it.

And just in-time for christmas... oh 2006 how I barely knew you, 2007 here I come... and thanks to the Zune what a way to start my new year.

This is going to be a good year to be a tech loving Geek.. LOL

Hey, any pics of the brown Zune?

I'm jumpin' out of my skin waiting for a review! It almost looks a little plump, but it looks very comfortable for the hands, mmmmmmMMMM

oh no I just saw that apple touch screen patent... wonder if it's too late to cancel Pre-order at Amazon?

Im waiting to purchase the 2nd gen Zunes early next year since they'll be making the hardware in house then and not using Toshiba. I want to see if they plan on changing the design.

Of course they'll change their design. If they follow iPod's example (which they should if they want to make money) they'll send out a new model/upgrade every 6-12 months to keep sucking in those people that insist on being on the bleeding edge of technology.

Hey, any pics of the brown Zune?

I don't know why, but for some reason the phrase "brown Zune" sounds vaguely illicit to me. Like "donkey punch" or something.

I think it's great that Microsoft took all the complaints Apple was getting about the case getting seriously mauled quickly and easily and provided a case that would prevent that rather than a micro-fiber bag. Touche Microsoft, touche.

I'm still in debate though! Should I wait for second generation Zune, or just believe they've gotten it mostly right the first time?!

They dropped the brown zune in the toilet, where it belongs. but that black and white zune look sic. I hope the WIFI feature gets expanded though

it def looks good, but for me the "closedness" of the whole thing is a deal-breaker. i don't want drm, mtp, or any other microsoft garbage. i just want it to play my music

Those cases look good, but they look like they've malted already...
I gotta say its an iPod remade, redesigned and made better despite the fact i own a 5G ipod .-_-.

I'm sure you guys thought of this, but be sure to get some comparison pics of this vs. an iPod & other media players. I'd like to see how they size up, as well as compare the physical controls.

ms is going to make alot of $$ off this. some of its my moolah. i wanna see dat review soon. HURRY!!!!!

Go Zune! Go Zune!

Move the hold button more to the right, downsize the screen and remove those two play-pause and back buttons and what do you get? An iPod

Can you actually replace the batteries on these. iPods are hard but the way the case look it seems like it would just crumble on opening. Anyway I would actually like to see this do well if anything at least to up the quality of iPods. Though I actually like iPods. I don't want/need a Zune but I hope that maybe Microsoft does something right with this. They surely need to do it with Windows. I'll take Mac OS or a Linux Distribution any day. Come on Microsoft use your resources properly!

I want me one soooo bad! I wish they had 60GB. Gosh I can taste its techie goodness. Yummm....delicious!

Here's a couple URL's with the side by side stuff: http://tinyurl.com/ejp8d and the front screen: http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/313/C9957/

No user replaceable battery. And I have to agree with notatoad- the proprietary, vertical market model popularized by iPod & iTunes doesn't look any better on a MS offering. It's still restrictive and a step backwards if anyone actually cared to pay attention to listener/user rights.

i am not a fan of the whole ipod, mainly due to the 'scene' associated with it. therefore i got an Archos av500 because it not only had a larger screen (4 in) but it held more (100 gb). if microsoft wants to win at the mp3 player market, they have to have a larger screen with more pixels and a bigger capacity. the wifi would be nice if they expanded the capability of it and not confining people to just three song plays. people don't really care how much something weighs or how small it is, as long as it looks good and does what they want it to do. the zune is an improvement on the ipod, but there are better things out there... for now that is.

:: the zune is an improvement on the ipod

Yeah, cuz it looks better, holds more songs, and easier to use than an iPod.

Wait.

Rawhead: "Yeah, cuz it looks better, holds more songs, and easier to use than an iPod."

So it holds less songs. But it arguably looks better (ipod styling is a bit played out in my personal opinion), and we don't know how easy it is to use yet. Unless you've had some hands-on time with it. Which I sincerely doubt.

How is it that they get to copy the click-wheel without a lawsuit?

I'm surprised to see so many people excited about this, the iPod is a great product and this thing is a yawn-generator. At best it is a big, low capacity iPod with WiFi. At worst... 3 inch blue screen of death!

So are all MP3 players with screens now iPod ripoffs now???

My iPod Nano is getting old (Oh, battery life...) and that WiFi feature on the Zune sounds really cool.

But I'm brazilian, living in Brazil, where gadgets like this take ages to arrive, they're all pricey and not many people have them.

It makes me think I'll would take way too long for me to actually use the WiFi capability of it.

Worth the spening? :/ Dunno...

god you guys can be lame... its not an ipod ripoff not every screen and hd player is an ipod ripoff... hers the facts

Its the same price as the same size ipod... but it has a 3" screen, wifi, and expandability because they said they will be releasing alot of updates for it and new codecs and expanding the wifi etc.... so same price and more features and bigger screen... that should be enough, but no instead you guys wanna whine "but its a copy of the ipod"

And no they cant get sued for having a round interface for navigation...and no apple didnt invent the round interface for navigation especialyl considering just about 90% of cell phones have that right below their screen in a miniture version.

And thelab: even if it was the smaller ipod, and priced the same... with wifi and screen... since when does 2 added features for the same price not win ... what exactly can the ipod do that makes it so wonderful exactly?

It doesn't copy the clickwheel - the round thing is just a standard D-pad.

I'm digging the fact that the entire case is translucent all around though.

all i know is translucent rubbery things, like the cover for my sandisk was translucent and now it's a strange yellowed color, and it gets all gunky... also phantam do you work for microsoft? if not where did you hear they just plan on expanding the capability of the player through updates... puh-leez. I'll belive that when I see it.

@ ELCHANMAN & Rob C

The world's first HD DAP was the Archos Jukebox 6000. I think that it's safe to say that the iPod was probably the first HD DAP that was popular outside of tech geek circles...

I wonder if they're ever going to come out with an in-line remote...

I for one never buy products for what they can do now, but for what they possibly could do in the future.

Uhhh, no. The first portable HDD dap was the Compaq PJB (later commercialized as the Hango PJB) - way before the Archos.

How intuitive is the software to use?

Stuart
http://www.earnersblog.com

PS. I would MUCH rather have a .5 inch larger screen that I may someday watch a video on than an extra 30GB's of storage on my portable music player.

I think I'll just stick with a Meizu Miniplayer.

Is it just me or does the Zune logo look sorta like a hypercube?

isnt this a rebadged toshiba? .... *sigh*

i'll wait for the 2nd gen. model.

hahaha that was funny. someone said the apple product was played out (which it is). The funny part is that an apple product can be named "played out" when it's being compared to possibly the most "played out" brand in North America. mmmm irony

Meh,

Inferior screen (same res streched out), inferior battery life, inferior interface, inferior size and weight... I'm not sure why peeps are beholden to this thing over the current 5.5g.

The very fact that it is MS, and MS has an unbroken record of shoddy first iterations is enough for me. Fanboys and rich kids are buying this thing on the 'hopes' and 'anticipation' of MS opening up the DRM and WiFi capabilities later? Oh yeah, and MS has been that customer focused in the past too, really. Maybe Zune rev 2 will be worth it, but for goodness sake people, just give your mad money to a charity, if you simply MUST spend it, until then.

Still I'm happy someone is going to keep Apple in check so they don't get lazy.

Woot Woot.
Ryan

phantom wrote: "god you guys can be lame... its not an ipod ripoff not every screen and hd player is an ipod ripoff... hers (sic) the facts"

Thanks, Nelly.

... but seriously, half of you think this is a real circular spinning clickwheel. Prepare to be disappointed.

With that said, I think some of the interface stuff looks pretty cool. And the ironic thing is that a majority of you iPod haters (due to the 'scene', or how big of a corporation Apple is, or how they lock you into DRM or iTunes) will buy this thinking you aren't getting any of that. Because everyone knows MS isn't *that* big, and that they don't proprietary formats or DRM like Apple does.

...oh, wait...

It looks nice.

I use my ipod everyday but I am interested to get some hands on time with this.

I saw a guy on the 6 train yesterday in a Zune tshirt and fiddling with the Zune itself.
Viral marketing? One of you guys?

people are actually getting excited over a microsoft ipod? i wouldnt be surprised if you plug the thing in to update the music and a toolbar pops up on the UI that links to zunecasts of free offers from whohever-the-bucket. i hate spyware.

"Rob C says:

from the looks of it, to me, its still just another iPod rip-off, the iPod started the hard-drive player market, and its gonna stay king!"

mac fanboys are usualy idiots that are pleased by lots of tredny flash and little actual info

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-5622055-1.html

The iPod's 2.5" display is smaller, but the 3" Zune and last year's iPod both offer the same resolution. The Zune's slightly larger display is still showing the same number of dots; they'll just be more obviously pixelated because each dot is larger. The lower pixel density of the Zune's screen means its display can only be less sharp.

This flaw is exaggerated by Microsoft's Vista-esque choice of using soft alpha transparency throughout the Zune interface. This makes for nice marketing photos, but makes it harder to navigate through screens when focusing on other things: walking, driving, exercising, riding a bike, or other things iPod users do.

While neither the iPod nor the Zune provide a cinematic movie experience, there is no benefit to having a slightly larger screen at the same resolution in a handheld device, apart from possibly lower battery life.

Go to this link for more info:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/9F60D74A-0E27-4F5F-B...