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Today's round-up of Zune News
The Zune arrived in a very rugged box which has been superbly designed. It's fabricated out of very strong cardboard and will protect your Zune very well. The outside of the box slides off to present you with a tucked in card that says "Welcome to the social". Lift that up and you'll see your new Zune held in place right in the middle. To either side are small lift up flaps that reveal your USB lead and your earphones. At the top of the box there's another compartment from which you can slide out your installation CD-rom, manuals and a soft pouch for keeping your Zune in pristine condition (until the anticipated Zune covers and holders come out that is). You know how it is with your walkman or iPod. When you travel and have to pack up the leads they just have to be bundled wherever you can. With the Zune the earphones and USB lead are supplied in their own rigid plastic container tubes so you can easily store everything away to keep it safe when you travel. All you have to do is keep your small Zune box and the plastic bits etc and you'll always have somewhere extra safe for your Zune. Speaking of the earphones, they are actually very neat. One of them has a magnet built in so that they snap together back to back for easy storage. Or you can attach them to the side of your PC when not in use and they'll stay there. Supplied with the earphones are soft, foam covers for added comfort. In all, if you have ever owned an iPod and appreciated the attention to detail of the packaging and accessories you'll be equally pleased (if not more so) by what Microsoft have done with the Zune. Contrary to what some commentators have been saying, it definitely doesn't look like a case of Microsoft cobbling together a product in a hurry to try and take on Apple. Absolutely not. If you want to take on Apple's iPod you have to approach the market with a better product - it's the only way. 
It feels substantial, with a textured plastic surround to the smooth, low glare screen. The plastic itself is semi translucent, giving the Zune an extra (as they say in France) I don't know what. The controls are very simple. There's the central button which is concave and holds your thumb gently in place. With it you can click up, down, left, right and also click the center. These clicks do different things according to what mode the Zune is in. For example, if you are watching a video and have turned the Zune edgeways to view it in widescreen format, the buttons change function to accomodate. As well as the central button there are two others, one either side. The first operates as a 'go back', or 'move up one level' command, while the other serves to operate 'play' and 'pause', as well as turning the Zune on and off.  All we would like to add at this point is the one slight negative to all the above. We felt the documentation supplied with the Zune was somewhat lacking. You get a glossy sheet folded into three which basically has three pictures showing a CD being inserted into a laptop, the Zune being connected via USB and the Zune actually connected to the Laptop. There's a sentence describing each while, on the back the eight main key functions also have a sentence each. We know, the Zune is an easy device but we'd have liked to have seen some more info in a larger booklet. For example, it might be useful to know in advance that you will have a new program installed to control the Zune, rather than Windows Media Player, and exactly what kind of installation there will be and how long it will take. Also it might be useful to know that by default it will scan your whole disk for files which could leave you hours before you can play with your new toy (unless you change the options from their default during install). Still, it's not too important and maybe there'll be more documentation with future models. The important thing for us is that it all worked straight out of the box. In the next section we'll describe what the Zune and accompanying software can do.
 The relative dimensions etc are exact. As you'll see the Zune is a little larger than the iPod being about 3/8ths of an inch (or a centimeter) taller, and just over a millimeter thicker. They are both almost exactly the same width. The iPod is 5.4 ounces (153 grams), while the Zune weighs in at 5.6 ounces (159 grams). So, all told they are pretty similar to each other at first glance. But that's where the similarities end. For a start take a look at that massive screen on the Zune. While the Video iPod is approximately 2 inches by 1.5 inches (3 square inches), the Zune is about 2.5 inches by 2 inches (5 square inches), that's 66% larger than Apple's screen. When you start watching video on the Zune and then go back to an iPod you soon start missing the larger screen size. In fact it more than makes up for the really neat touch thumbwheel on the iPod (we assume this is an Apple patent that cannot be used elsewhere), which is the one major thing we miss having when using the Zune. Also, Microsoft have made much better use of the screen. In portrait position you can navigate easily through the various menus and, once you get the hang of it, you'll find that holding the scroll key down turns out to be just as fast as with an iPod, with the bonus that the instant you release the button the scrolling stops. And, as you scroll, the first letter of the section you are in is shown enlarged on the display, so you can quickly jump to the song or artist you are looking for. Additionally the color graphics and the way they zoom and fade is an excellent touch. You can also pick from a selection of pre-loaded backgrounds or you can download your own images and use them. And once your Zune has downloaded the album art for your music collection it displays that too, either as small icons next to tracks and albums, or larger on the screen when in play mode.  With the file sharing you can switch the in-built wi-fi on and 'beam' your favorite tunes to other Zune users. They are then allowed to play that song three times within three days. After that they can choose to purchase the file from the Zune store, or you could just wi-fi it to them again. By default the wi-fi is on so this will impact your battery life by about 10%. But then again, if you turn it off, who knows what goodies you might miss picking up from other Zune users. So it's probably best to only turn it off when you'll be away from other users. Incidentally, if someones sends you a song that you really like you don't have to log on straight away to buy it. You can click on a button in your menu to set your Zune to purchase and download the file automatically next time it syncs with your computer. A very handy idea and we are sure the one behind all the wi-fi. Microsoft are likely pretty sure that a lot more music will get sold through the Zune store this way - and we think they're right. In the final section of our review we discuss the software that comes with the device and the way it works with the Zune online store.
Each album is shown with it's album art, and then the tracks for each are listed along with other details you may be used to from using the Microsoft Media Player. If you wish to fit more on the screen you can toggle the view to a simple text view of the tracks. In fact, if you are used to using Media Player you'll be pretty much right at home. There are even visualisations you may be used to as well as the ability to play videos directly in the software. What's mostly new, though, is the Zune Marketplace which we will come to shortly. The 'Album Art View' shows all the albums you have by their cover. You will see here that only a few of the art graphics have been downloaded. Leave your Zune software running and it will keep fetching more. Scrolling through your music collection in this view is very quick and easy, especially if you remember the covers of all your albums.  One of the great things we like about the Marketplace is its flexibility. You can either purchase and download individual tracks or, if you prefer, you can purchase a Zune Pass subscription which lets you download as many songs as you like for a flat monthly fee. As long as you maintain your subscription then you can keep the potentially thousands of songs you can download on your Zune. But remember, if you select the Pass option and choose to cancel later, your downloaded tunes will also be cancelled (although any purchased individually will remain on your system and playable). 
We're still organizing our own music collection and personalizing the review Zune we were sent. We intend to see how much music, video and other data such as photos (did we mention it can store and wi-fi photos?) we can get onto the device. And then we'll start experimenting with charging times and play times under different conditions. Microsoft say you get up to 14 hours audio play time or 4 hours video from a 3-4 hour charge. But that's under optimum conditions. We will find out how it actually performs in the real world. So now it's time for the $64,000 (probably $1 million in today's money) question.... Is the Zune a better personal media player than the equivalent iPod Video? Following are the Zune's pros and cons as we see them: Pros:
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