I made sure to get up about 30 minutes early this morning so I could update my Zune firmware and software in order to mess around with it a bit today at work. So far I think both are very worthy upgrades. Any of my following thoughts are from limited use so far.
Just to let you know of my qualifications of judging this new Zune outfit, I've owned my Zune 30 since day 1, and it is by far my favorite player that I've owned (out of the iPod Nano and Vision M). I also have a Zune Pass subscription, the $14.99/month music rental deal. I'm running on Vista Ultimate.
First up, the new Zune Marketplace software. MUCH better than before. The old software was a merely rebadged WMP11, which was ok I guess, but the Marketplace front was slow and felt clunky at time. This new software seems very well laid out, and so far in my experience, it's FAST. Everything from bringing up the Marketplace front page to switching between artists and albums quickly. I like how the default view of the local music list shows artists on the left, albums in the middle, and songs on the right. Everything is right there immediately without having to switch between tabs or links.
I like how the Martketplace is laid out, especially when I first looked for an artist to see if any new albums had been added (they supposedly added quite a few new songs, a couple million I think?). When you are in an artist or album view, the rest of that artist's albums appear at the bottom of the screen for quick navigation. On the old software, you had to click a couple of times to get into another album.
But overall, the Zune software is fast so far in my testing. The entire suite got a makeover, nothing of the old software remains. I was able to download the new software and install it directly over top the old, and had 0 issues with it. I love the way everything looks, it's got a decidedly Apple feel to the buttons and such, which I'm fine with. The changeable textured background adds a very unique feel to the software. It amazes me that after seeing this software and the new Zune Originals marketing, that Microsoft can actually pump out something that is as stylish as this.
As for the new firmware, it works fine so far. It updated with absolutely no problems, and did so in about 60 seconds....pretty quick. The new top menu looks awesome with the enlarged font, I much prefer this one over the old one. So far, after playing around with the new interface in my car on the way to work, it seems a bit faster than the old one. On the old, sometimes it would pause a second when switching between songs (most other times it was instant), but on the new interface, I haven't had it really slow on me once (I haven't used it nearly as much, though, so we'll see how this goes). The new animation when switching album art in a shuffled playlist is nice and quick so far.
The one thing I don't like about the new firmware/interface is the smaller font size of the artist/album/song names during playback. Why did they make these smaller? From the distance I view the screen in my car, it takes more than a quick glance now to see what's playing if I don't recognize the song. Even the menus past the top menu have had all of their fonts reduced. This is a minor inconvenience for me, as I liked the bigger type size, but I'll make do. I guess they wanted to be able to fit more on the screen, and this may not even be as big of a problem with the bigger 3.2" screen on the Zune 80, compared to the 3.0" screen on my Zune 30 (not sure if that extra 0.2" would make a difference).
I did test out wireless syncing this morning, and it worked perfectly. It seemed quite slow in my one test, but I'll definitely be trying it out more tonight. Seems like it took a couple of minutes to sync just one 3 minutes song.....hopefully this isn't the norm.
Overall, I'm extremely happy. I've definitely gotten my money's worth . I enjoyed my Zune before, and my biggest complaint was the software. Now that the new software seems to be a much more enjoyable experience, I'm looking forward to using it much more often. A HUGE :thumbsup: from me on both the firmware and software.
EDIT: Forgot to add that I ran across the new online functionality that is much like an XBOX Live account. You have an online persona, which looks to report info such as songs played, favorite song, currently playing, etc. Kind of a neat idea, and it looks to tie in together with the rest of Microsoft's Live offerings.
Just to let you know of my qualifications of judging this new Zune outfit, I've owned my Zune 30 since day 1, and it is by far my favorite player that I've owned (out of the iPod Nano and Vision M). I also have a Zune Pass subscription, the $14.99/month music rental deal. I'm running on Vista Ultimate.
First up, the new Zune Marketplace software. MUCH better than before. The old software was a merely rebadged WMP11, which was ok I guess, but the Marketplace front was slow and felt clunky at time. This new software seems very well laid out, and so far in my experience, it's FAST. Everything from bringing up the Marketplace front page to switching between artists and albums quickly. I like how the default view of the local music list shows artists on the left, albums in the middle, and songs on the right. Everything is right there immediately without having to switch between tabs or links.
I like how the Martketplace is laid out, especially when I first looked for an artist to see if any new albums had been added (they supposedly added quite a few new songs, a couple million I think?). When you are in an artist or album view, the rest of that artist's albums appear at the bottom of the screen for quick navigation. On the old software, you had to click a couple of times to get into another album.
But overall, the Zune software is fast so far in my testing. The entire suite got a makeover, nothing of the old software remains. I was able to download the new software and install it directly over top the old, and had 0 issues with it. I love the way everything looks, it's got a decidedly Apple feel to the buttons and such, which I'm fine with. The changeable textured background adds a very unique feel to the software. It amazes me that after seeing this software and the new Zune Originals marketing, that Microsoft can actually pump out something that is as stylish as this.
As for the new firmware, it works fine so far. It updated with absolutely no problems, and did so in about 60 seconds....pretty quick. The new top menu looks awesome with the enlarged font, I much prefer this one over the old one. So far, after playing around with the new interface in my car on the way to work, it seems a bit faster than the old one. On the old, sometimes it would pause a second when switching between songs (most other times it was instant), but on the new interface, I haven't had it really slow on me once (I haven't used it nearly as much, though, so we'll see how this goes). The new animation when switching album art in a shuffled playlist is nice and quick so far.
The one thing I don't like about the new firmware/interface is the smaller font size of the artist/album/song names during playback. Why did they make these smaller? From the distance I view the screen in my car, it takes more than a quick glance now to see what's playing if I don't recognize the song. Even the menus past the top menu have had all of their fonts reduced. This is a minor inconvenience for me, as I liked the bigger type size, but I'll make do. I guess they wanted to be able to fit more on the screen, and this may not even be as big of a problem with the bigger 3.2" screen on the Zune 80, compared to the 3.0" screen on my Zune 30 (not sure if that extra 0.2" would make a difference).
I did test out wireless syncing this morning, and it worked perfectly. It seemed quite slow in my one test, but I'll definitely be trying it out more tonight. Seems like it took a couple of minutes to sync just one 3 minutes song.....hopefully this isn't the norm.
Overall, I'm extremely happy. I've definitely gotten my money's worth . I enjoyed my Zune before, and my biggest complaint was the software. Now that the new software seems to be a much more enjoyable experience, I'm looking forward to using it much more often. A HUGE :thumbsup: from me on both the firmware and software.
EDIT: Forgot to add that I ran across the new online functionality that is much like an XBOX Live account. You have an online persona, which looks to report info such as songs played, favorite song, currently playing, etc. Kind of a neat idea, and it looks to tie in together with the rest of Microsoft's Live offerings.