|
#758 - Microsoft Zune - Part 1/3 |
|
|
|
Written by Zach Jeffers
|
|
Tuesday, 21 November 2006 |
|
Page 1 of 5
USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR GODEM ONLINE INC. (3dGameMan.com):
click here
Introduction:
In times of yesteryear, if you wanted to take you music with you, you had to go buy a portable Walkman (tape cassette). These were great, until the Compact Disc came out. Then there were portable CD players. These offered superior sound quality to any previous form of portable music. This format even carries out to this day. There have been other attempts to challenge this format like the Mini-Disc and such, but nothing has come close. That is until the first Apple iPod came out! This offered the ability to transfer music from your Apple computer to a user friendly portable music player. This was fantastic... for Mac fans as they were the only ones able to use them as they used the Firewire interface and software was only available on the Macintosh computers. Apple quickly saw the available market for this new MP3 player and soon came out with a sleeker more compatible iPod that used the USB2 interface. The software became iTunes and was available for Apple and Microsoft based computers. Needless to say, Apple took the portable music market by storm with clever and artistic ads and a 'Cool' factor that nothing else had.
Since then, there have been many manufactures that have tried to compete with the iPod and have failed. There are many companies that have tried to simply take what ever market was left and cater to them. Creative has a variety of great products including the Zen line of portable media players. Sony has some nice trendy players as well as Toshiba and others. Many of these have been declared as 'iPod Killers', but none have even come close to that which is known by it's preceding 'i'.
The newest competitor to come about is Microsoft. This November Microsoft dropped it's previous attempt to take over the iTunes market (PlayForSure and MSN Music), and introduced the all new Microsoft Zune. This had been rumored for many months by bloggers around the web but until just a few short months ago, there had been no real proof. Once the player was officially announced, the term 'iPod Killer' was instantly tagged to the player. While Microsoft continues to deny, and rightly so, that they are trying to produce an 'iPod Killer', there is still the obvious jealousy. Microsoft is dedicating multiples of millions of dollars to creating what they are calling a more 'social experience.'
This is the first part of a three part review. We will first look at the hardware itself. The second review will focus on the usability of the Zune and the third focusing on the Zune Software and Marketplace. So let's get to it!
|
All Video/Written Reviews 
