I actually liked the design of the first Zune (well except that **** brown one they did) and thought the screen was great when I tried it. This just means you have to be near your home router, right? Or am I understanding that wrong? I mean, if that's the case I'm probably going to be near my computer anyway. Not that big a deal to me. And you can control what you put on your iPod. iTunes also uses standard MP3s you load yourself, not just what you buy from itunes.
well near home router is a good range. 50-100ft is not bad. from what i am understanding how it works..if there are newer songs on your computer's collection..and ur near ur home network..just turn on the zune, hit sync and it will get the new stuff. what i meant bout ipod was i dont care bout getting new songs through apple's music store wirelessly which is the big deal with itouch. i know that ipod and any music player lets you put whatever u want on there. i mean thats what i do with my nano.
What you should be looking at is the Archos 605 wifi.. This thing blows anything by Apple or Microsoft out of the ocean, and even beats Creative's units (which are superb themselves). This thing: 80 gb (mine is, they range from 30 to 160, or even a flash-only 4gb model) Touch screen 800x480 resolution Streaming content from any computer on your home network DVR (with dock accessory) Opera web browser, WITH Flash (for Youtube, etc) and Widgets Completely drag-and-drop. It doesn't even COME with any software at all. Very good support for video and audio codecs out of the box, with upgrades for even more available Full-DVD output resolution to any TV with the proper accessories Internet browsing on your home TV if you want Audio quality is excellent, on a par with my Creative Zen: M, and the video quality is astonishingly good, you have to see it to believe it. Nothing else on the market comes close, not even the Vision:W. Is it perfect? No.. Battery life does not thrill me, there is no FM tuner, and no microphone. But the greats far outweigh the few negatives. Best part? I picked mine up from Amazon for only $299, with no tax and free shipping. (get their credit card, and they give you a $30 credit, actual price was $329) DVR dock is less than $100. Just figured I would toss this in before people run out and buy any more apple of microsoft gadgets that cost more and do less.
This is also in the running for my next MP3 player, but I could've sworn one of the reasons I hated it was that it seemed in order to do most of the "extra stuff" it does, you'd need to buy add-ons or additional "stuff". It ends up costing you a lot more, doesn't it? For example, the Zune 80 GB does pretty much everything I need it to do and it only costs $249. I liked it when I researched it, though. Maybe I should re-consider it...
The only extra accessory I have purchased is the DVR Station Dock/Rapid Charger. I know I will not have any need, at least in the foreseeable future, of buying any extra plugins for audio or video codecs, as I am able to convert anything I want into a format it already supports out of the box. The only other thing I may eventually buy is the Opera Web Browser, but I am not in any big rush for that. Basically, the extra capability is there if you want or need it, but the majority of people simply will not need them. The nice thing then is, all the licensing fees for all those un-needed codecs are no longer built into the price of the hardware, making it much cheaper.
I recently got a creative ZEN w. Love it, but these zunes look pretty nice. http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/one-second-update-creative-zen-w-porno-shot-198556.php
