Today Engadget decided to review the, very debated, Zune DAP from Microsoft. The review is very extensive and covers pretty much everything that anyone wants to buy. I’ll try to resume some of the aspects I found the most relevant, though, of course, some of you might consider others more relevant, or I might have forgotten some. I’m just trying to spare you the “work” of reading the long article.

- The Round button does *NOT* work like the iPod’s Click Wheel, it’s a normal 5 Directions Pad, like a cellphone’s
- The Screen is larger than the iPod’s, but the resolution is the same
- The Zune player’s software is very pleasant and functional
- The Zune’s Windows software is aesthetically pleasant, but riddled with many bugs and annoying errors
- It’s about as wide as the iPod but longer and thicker than it
- The surface is “rubbery” and not prone to scratch as much as the iPod
- The battery life, even with Wifi and various settings in non-minimal positions was 11 hours and 47 minutes, which is very decent
- It’s (for now) incompatible with Windows Vista (put this one under the lol category)
And here are all their final thoughts on it:
Ever hear the phrase go big or go home? The only thing big about the Zune right now is the marketing campaign.
But more importantly:
Do we think there’s potential for betterment of the platform and especially the player through software updates? Given enough time, absolutely. Would we recommend the product for purchase, like, right now? Not a chance.







Whilst I can’t believe the installer is incompatible with Vista, If you set compatibility mode to Windows XP it does work, so there is a workaround, just in case anyone has installed Vista yet…
Though that may be true Ross (I haven’t confirmed the veracity), Windows Vista is supposedly finished already and has already shipped to the “manufacturers”. The Zune should already be compatible with it!
Yeah I know, I totally agree, its a complete joke, but these kind of WTFs happen. I was just offering a work-around, Microsoft should be releasing a vista-side patch to fix this problem before vista hits the shelves though, so most people will have no problems…
Now, it’s almost understandable that third-party peripheral would not be compatible with Vista but their own products, this is a good one.
i think the zune is a great altenative to the ipod norm as far as the vista problem thats just stupid
Yeah I’d still prefer a Zune this Xmas, besides, I won’t be upgrading to Vista for another 2 years, until I finish Uni and get some dough, so I’m not exactly worried about software compatibility.