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The Microsoft Zune. What an absolutely beautiful device. An MP3 player with a 3 inch screen which is perfect for watching your favorite movie on a bus or a plane or when you’re just waiting in the stupid doctor’s office for your stupid turn in line to get your stupid chest x-ray taken. You’ve got 30GB of hard drive space to store tons of media, which is more than enough room to store 20 movies plus thousands of MP3s.

Even before you open the box, the Zune screams uniqueness. Rather than following the typical glossy packaging trend, it arrives in a non-shiny container, with pictures of people sitting around, chilling out, and having a Zune party (yes, they exist). The caption reads “welcome to the social [sic]” and with the features it’s bringing, I can’t wait to join in.

Welcome to the social. For once, Microsoft finally got their branding right. What sets the Zune apart from those other digital audio players (DAPs) *cough*iPod*cough* is that the Zune comes with Wireless built-in. No, you can’t surf the internet on it (being that it only has 7 buttons on it, that could prove to be difficult), but you can sync up with other Zunes in the vicinity and trade songs. There are restrictions on the transferred songs, such as you have 3 days or 3 plays (whichever comes first) to listen to them before they are removed from the player, but I think that it’s a great chance for bands with less than stellar advertising budgets to get exposure to new fans.

The display that Microsoft has decided to include in the device is 3 inches (diagonal) big, and has surprisingly crisp pictures. Before I purchased it, I was of the mindset that 3 inches was just too small to have any kind of real viewable picture; I’ve since changed my mind. I’ve encoded quite a few of my favorite movies into Microsoft’s Windows Media Video format, and the quality is definitely watchable. It won’t be winning any home theater awards for clearest picture, but it also won’t be getting any complaints.

Along with the hardware launch, Microsoft presented the Zune Marketplace which is essentially their answer to Apple’s iTunes service. While I can’t review the quality of the downloads personally as they don’t allow Bermudian credit cards to sign up, I can say that I was a tad annoyed when I was looking at the pricing of songs. You see, Microsoft elected to use their Microsoft Points (MSP) currency rather than hard dollars and cents. This makes sense because MSP are also the currency of their Xbox 360 platform; they’re interchangeable, so I can understand the reasoning behind wanting to unify the two systems. My problem is that they may be misleading the customer a bit when they’re purchasing their songs.

You see, Microsoft is charging 80 MSP per song, however to get 80 MSP, you will need 99 cents. I have little doubt that someone, somewhere out there will think that they’re getting a deal when they see that songs on the Zune Marketplace are 80 MSP, but on iTunes are 99 cents. In reality, the costs are obviously the same, but to someone who isn’t paying attention, it would sound like you’re getting a better deal on Microsoft’s site. I don’t know if I agree with that. Then again, what do I know about marketing? Absolutely zero. Food for thought.

Back on track, the Zune software is actually rather useful. When attempting to help friends out with their iPods and consequently iTunes, I always felt that the user interface was designed specifically for Macs with PCs being an afterthought. While this may be clever marketing (e.g. to get the user used to the OSX look so that when they finally switch *hint hint* it won’t be a shock), it always felt out of place when it was inevitably installed in Windows. Not so with the Zune software. On my Vista-equipped laptop, the software integrates beautifully with the look and feel of Windows.

On the functionality side, getting your media onto the Zune is honestly as easy as clicking and dragging it from Windows Explorer onto the software. You drag it, the software synchronizes it. It’s seriously that easy.

The battery lfie on the device is exceptional as well. Since I first got it, I’ve used it at least an hour a day (I listen to it on my scooter to and from work) and I only have to charge it about once a week or less. Obviously I have to charge it a little more often if I happen to have the opportunity to watch a movie or two on it, but even then, it’s still well deserving of a “good” rating.

All in all, I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending the Zune to anyone considering the purchase of a new MP3 player. It’s got all the functionality you could ever want (and more), it’s got high quality components, and most of all, it’s incredibly easy and intuitive to use.

Rating: 9/10