Echoing Back

Got the chance to play with Zune. Zune software, of course, as the DAP (digital audio player) isn’t available outside the US yet. I downloaded the software from the zune website.

Downloading isn’t much of a hassle but installation is. Started installing around 11:30pm Tuesday and finished past 3am. I don’t know if it’s because of my hardware or if an internet connection was needed while installing. My DSL usually is in its prime speed during those hours so I don’t know exactly what to blame.

After that everything was a breeze. I was quite surprised that online reviews are true. The layout isn’t cluttered even cleaner than my iTunes. And the jukebox didn’t lag much during the operation.

Playing videos was faster than iTunes but connecting to the Zune Marketplace was slower than connecting to the iTunes Store. Searching was just as snappy as it is on iTunes. All my non-iTunes music and videos were automatically added even audio and videopodcasts I downloaded using iTunes. That’s good news because as of now, there are no Podcasts yet in the Zune Marketplace. Of course, it will still be easier to just do both the downloading and playing in iTunes.

Tried browsing through the Marketplace’s catalog. While the Zune’s layout looks cleaner, it is still easier to explore iTunes Store even without using iTunes search feature. More points for iTunes if we put the search in consideration. Last time I checked Zune’s search doesn’t work in the Marketplace, which means buyers will have to manually searched through Zune’s 2 million songs for sale.

By the way, iTunes collection is now more than 3 million songs. That doesn’t include its TV shows, movies and podcasts catalog.

No way to check if syncing the Zune DAP with Zune software is as easy as syncing the iPod to iTunes. Like I said, I have yet to get a Zune. Early online reviews, however, say it wasn’t as easy.