This post continues my Microsoft Zune review, courtesy of the Matchstick and Chatthreads viral marketing campaign. The first part of my review dealt with the installation process and Zune jukebox software. This installment will finish up the software review. Previous posts in this series can be found at:
Oh, and if you’re reading this and feel so inclined, give the good people at Chatthreads something to do by clicking on the image below and submitting your comments about the Zune.
The Software (Continued)
The Device View
Status
This simple screen shows the current status of your Zune device, and allows you to control the sync operation. There’s really nothing else to say about it, except that just about everything on the page is a link that takes you to a more in depth analysis of that aspect of the operation.
When installing, I chose to manually sync items to my Zune, simply because I have well over 8GB of music that I care to listen to. I started by dragging an album from the artists view in the music section down to the handy-dandy Zune icon. The entire album took about a minute to add. The main device page shows what is currently syncing to the device, what you’ve recently added to the device, and the completion percentage of the operation.
Every time that you drag some object (be it an album, a playlist, or a video, etc) to the device, a record called a sync group is created. These groups can be viewed in the device settings menu within the jukebox software, and allow you to easily see what you’ve added to the device, when you added it, and remove the entire group with a single button click. As you can see, I’ve added a few albums and a playlist to my device.
From this page, you can also manually create a sync group, which is similar to creating an autoplaylist that syncs directly to your Zune. Again, it would be nice if this feature were a little more developed, but for something simple like adding a bunch of Classic Rock tracks to my device, it’s more than adequate.
The main failing point of sync groups is also one of the bigger failing points of the autoplaylist feature. There is no option when creating either to limit the list by size. Meanwhile I have an 8GB Zune, and well over 60GB of music in my library, which makes adding any playlist to the Zune a guessing game. Nowhere in the software is the size of a playlist shown, until you try and put a list that is too big onto the Zune, at which point it complains and refuses to sync until you shave down the size of the list. A nice addition would be emulating iTunes, where the software syncs as much of the selected playlist as possible, and then tells the user which songs didn’t fit.
Even more exasperating is that the software gives the option to automatically re-encode audio files that are over a certain bit rate threshold to a lower bit rate when syncing to the Zune. This is a fantastic feature, as it allowed me to put roughly 150% more songs on the device for a small loss in quality. Again however, nowhere in the software does it list the size of the playlist before and after the conversion, making filling the Zune an even bigger game of chance when this feature is turned on.
Music, Playlists, Videos, Pictures, and Podcasts
Each of these sections acts exactly as its counterpart in the collection view of the software, with few exceptions. These are obvious things, like not being able to create a new playlist directly on the device in the playlists view.
Friends
To be honest, I haven’t quite figured out this part of the software yet. Jake and I, while reviewing on our own, haven’t had much time to use the two devices together. I would imagine that this section of the view will come alive once we do.
The Social View
The social view in the Zune jukebox software provides a direct link to the Zune Social from inside the software. It contains three sub views – friends, me, and inbox. The friends tab is the default, and shows a listing of all your registered friends. In this case, since my Zune id is linked to my Xbox Live id, it shows my friends from Xbox Live, only one of whom (Jake aka ev98) actually owns a Zune.
Friends
Clicking on the Zune tag of one of your friends takes you to an in-software summary of their Zune use. It shows their Zune card, all of the songs that they’ve recently listened to, and a list of their friends. Some of the songs in the listing are tagged with a button that says more info that takes you to a webpage containing album and artist details for that song. Below, you can see Jake’s Zune page and all the Slanty-Haired music that he listens to:
These online pages are where the Zune Social really excels. They remind me of the golden days of the Yahoo Launchcast service, a customizable online radio that played songs based on your ratings of album, artist, and genre. It had a huge index of songs, and much like the Zune Social, offered artist and album info for most every available song.
A typical album page on the Zune Social contains a large cover art picture, a listing of the songs on that album, complete with playable samples and the option to purchase either individual songs or the entire album, and a listing of other albums by that artist. The page also has a place for a professional album review, and a number of listener views, and highlights a Zune user who is the top listener to that particular artist. Each of these page elements hotlinks to another page of the site, giving it a Wikipedia-like quality, that allows an unsuspecting user to simply browse for hours on end.
Similar pages, although without option to purchase, can be accessed from directly in player by clicking on the artist name instead of the more info button. These in-player versions of the pages are separated into categories that give artist information (including top-played songs, every album ever released, and a listing of your friends who listen to the artist), a full length biography complete with pictures, a listing of all Zune users who listen to the artist, and a list of all related artists in the Zune Social library. All of this make the service a prime tool for discovering great new music, which really, is what music should be all about.
Me
This page in the software is very similar to a friend’s page, simply showing your Zune card, your plays, and a listing of your friends. Following the hotlink from the page to the Zune.net profile website allows you to customize your Zune card, and post it to Facebook as an application.
Customizing the appearance of the Zune card was a simple matter, although for some reason, the word ‘Zune’ is not allowed to appear in your status message – its banned like a swear word. So instead of ‘is reviewing the Zune,’ I had to settle for the status message ‘is reviewing the Zoon.’ Below, you can see my Zune page. Note the lack of Slanty-haired four-pieces in comparison to Jake’s page.
Inbox
Another aspect of the social that I haven’t quite figured out yet – this appears to be some sort of in-service email client. I’ll write about it later on once I’ve used it a little bit more.
The Disc View
As expected, shows the disc currently in the CD-Rom drive of your computer. In my case, it happens to be Guns ‘n Roses Appetite for Destruction. The view gives album art, a list of songs, and the option to import them into your library. The player can rip CDs in WMA CBR, WMA VBR, WMA Lossless, or MP3.
Outro
That concludes Part 2 of my Microsoft Zune Review. To recap, this part concluded the Zune Jukebox Software portion of the review, and touched ever so lightly on the Zune Social.
Stay tuned for my review of the Zune hardware device, as well as my impressions regarding the Zune Social.
Thanks for Reading,
Jon
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