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Not having the time to shop for my Kris Kringle, I instructed Cankles to help me buy something.

Although I personally woudln't drink it, she got candy cane flavoured hot chocolate from Second Cup.

Of course, when we finally drew numbers, guess what.... she got my gift.

....My luck is rubbing off. posted by losir at 10:44 PM

Next time you're at a store, do not become irate with crappy customer service or inept cashiers, or get your naggy-ass tasered!

....Let's see her yoga that out. posted by losir at 5:52 PM

So I bought the Zune 30 which is the first generation Microsoft iPod - and it already bugs me. iPod fanbois, nothing to worry about here.

Yes, I'm late to the game. I only purchased the Zune because it was going for $129.99 CAD, refurbed.

I got the frosty white colour, and while it's not iPod white, it's close. The shell is a matte white rubbery surface - everyone thought it came with a case, but nope, that's how it rolls.

Let's cut to the chase, here's why the 1st Gen Zune failed (and quite miserably if you ask me).

Menus and GUI is portrait-centric. From viewing your picture thumbnails to selecting a song, you must do it in portrait mode - a la iPod.

Viewing said pictures and videos however are done in landscape mode. One ends up swiveling the Zune back and forth just to go from viewing to selecting. It's fine if you're viewing pictures as slideshows, but it's a two handed operation if you want to browse with thumbnails first.

Speaking of pictures, you can have customized background as wallpaper, but only set to portrait mode. i.e.: If you have a landscape picture (and why wouldn't you?) and want to use it as a wallpaper, it will just crop out the sides until it fits in a portrait.... This is just amateurish. At least shrink it so that the sides fit - come on, old coloured cellphones can do this!!

You cannot create a playlist for videos, and you CANNOT skip to the next/previous video. This is really the deal breaker here - for me at least. I loaded up 30-40 music videos, only to find out I have to finish one file, exit out of full screen (twist device from landscape to portrait), navigate to the next video, play it, and twist once more back to landscape to view. This as you can obviously tell, gets tiring to the point of tears!

Speaking of videos, there are 2 main problems, one which can't be addressed, and the other, I can't believe they haven't fixed.

1. The only format it supports is WMV. While I understand sort of why it did that (it does stand for Windows Media Video), you'd think that they'd at least thrown in some token mp4 support. Heck, my Sony Clie supports mp4.

2. If the .wmv videos aren't formated to the way it likes, you will get a video WITH NO TITLE. Oh, it'll exist and it plays fine, you just have a blank line with video duration in the bar. How great is that?!

The Zune comes with TV Output capabilities, and although it only plays back resolutions of 320x240 on the TV, which in itself stinks, at least you can, right? Well, sort of.

You have to pay for the privilege to do so. You need to buy some $40 cable in order for TV out to work. It doesn't come with the player - fourty bones for the honour of crappy TV out resolution? Pass.

What portable USB drive? Rhetorical question, as it isn't. The Zune cannot be used as a USB drive. Nopers. "Wait!" you scream. "I googled it, and it says there's a registry hack for it. Heck, someone even wrote a little .exe file to auto hack the registry to help you with this!"

True. You had to run the Zune sync software, upload something, and while doing so, crash/close/CTRL+ALT+Delete the Zune Sync before you can copy the files over - and they only work in very specific directory structures if you want the Zune to recognize format supported files. The transfer speeds of the Zune is decent, so you better sync something nice and big first before you try to crash the sync app. Oh that's right, I forgot. The latest 2.3 Zune firmware disables this hack completely, and even when done "correctly", the zune is set to read-only. Nice.

One cool thing is that you can charge the Zune while it is connected to your PC. "Great!" you exclaim. "Score one for the good guys."

Not so fast bucko, that's the only way it charges out of the box. Oh, you could buy extra Zune docking stations for $50, and that'll probably charge it from the wall - but straight out of the box? I gotta power my PC/laptop just to get juice back into my Zune. Lovely. I have a AC-USB adapter, I'll try to charge it like that tonight. Wish me luck - but the iPod comes with an adapter from factory.

Finally sound. I hear the newer Zune has better headphones, but Zune 30 doesn't. They look cheap. I haven't used them yet, but I'll give it a go. I'll plug in my Sonys later, but still, yet another disappointment. Sure, the iPod headphones aren't ravingly good, so maybe that's a par - I won't cry about it.

Are there any good points? Sure, the screen is nice, and although 3" displays aren't wow anymore, at least it still looks good. The 9 meg .wmv videos I download off the net look great on the Zune, very viewable. The pictures I've taken looks spiffy as heck too.

Price is right. $130 for a 30gb mp3 device is fine. Sound is supposedly decent, so I'm not complaining. It's slightly bigger than an old ipod, but then at least the screen is bigger too. While big, it's still pocketable - at least for guys with deep pocket jeans.

I don't know how it'll fair at the gym - I have a bad feeling that dropping the Zune more than once might kill the HDD sooner than later though.

All in all, a very flawed device that I can't return because XSCargo doesn't do returns, but I'll still happy because at the end of the day, with all the gripes, I've finally got a decent sized mp3 player where I can store a lot of songs w/o having to continually upload.

There are many other nags I can write about, but it'll just sound like sour grapes.

....Best of all, I said I'd never go iPod, and I'm sticking to that. posted by losir at 5:01 PM

I'm a sur-vive-vor.

....You should hear me sing that. posted by losir at 11:14 PM

It's 4:23am, I should sleep.

But I have no gumption.

....And no tagline. posted by losir at 4:22 AM

Stop me if you've heard this one.

"So I was standing there by myself at urinal #2, when a guy walks in and stands right beside me at urinal #1...."

....And now they are starting to talk to me. *Groan* posted by losir at 6:43 PM

I really like this picture.

....I'll post more of Mooch later.

posted by losir at 12:00 AM

Okay, 3 more pix of Mooch. One is a colourized version of the B&W I made earlier.

posted by losir at 12:10 AM

Dang photogenic dog. He was so happy to see so much snow.

....Shoveling snow is sucky.

posted by losir at 4:15 PM