So I’ve been on my deathbed for 2 days now running one crazy fever. Good news is that the fever broke earlier this afternoon so I can finally stand up for more than 5 mins at a time. So I guess it’s a good time to write a lengthy review of the Zune 80.

After upgrading my sister’s older Zune 30 to the new Zune software, I was definitely impressed with the overall experience. Coupled with everything else I read about the hardware, I decided to place an order for one.

I ultimately decided on a Zune 80, since I could fathom a world with only 4 or 8GB worth of storage. I was getting sick of picking and choosing what media went on my music player, so I figured going with an 80GB would squash that whole issue. Yeah, yeah.. the Zune 80 is bigger than the Zune 8, but I’m coming off an iPod 30GB Video, so the size difference is neglible.

Shipping time

I placed an order for the Zune 80 last Thursday at 3pm on the Zune Originals site so I could get the custom engraving and design on the back. 24 hours later, I got a shipping confirmation. Woah. That was pretty fast production time.

This morning at about 11am, Fedex arrived at my door dropping off my brand new Zune. A few hours later I checked the UPS tracking numbre to find the origin and it shipped from from Shenzhen, China. Holy smokes, that was fast. Less 4 days from clicking “Confirm order” to my doorstep. Talk about impressive.

Unboxing

The Zune v1 was quite good with high quality build materials and a very minimalist (read: apple-like) approach. I didn’t expect much improvement in this area. However, Microsoft did a great job here making the customer feel special when ordering from ordering from the Zune Originals site with a special box and a “Thank You” card blazoned with a “Zune Originals” Logo. Very slick. Everything was packaged neatly and they upgraded the headphone quality.

(Looking at the unboxing of a non-Zune Originals, it’s safe to say that I got the better end of the stick.)

Connecting it for the first time

I already had the latest Zune client installed on my PC from when I upgraded my sister’s Zune so setup was as easy. I just plugged it in and was prompted to upgrade the firmware to the latest v2.2 and to give it a name. Entire process took less than 2 mins.

Setting up wireless syncing

I had visions of painful scrolling in the Zune device UI to connect it to my wireless network. Thankfully, they allow you to do this on the desktop software. Once connected, you choose to setup wireless sync’ing and it automatically finds surrounding wifi networks. I selected my network, entered my encryption key and it connected succesfully. At no point did I have to specify what encryption type I was using. I could definitely see a lay-person set this up in no-time flat.

Moving off iTunes to Zune

Since I was coming off iTunes, all my music is stored in the well-known “\iTunes\iTunes Music” directory. For me, it happens to be off a network drive mapped to V:. I figured it would be easy enough to make the switch, but to minimize the pain, I just told the Zune software to use the same iTunes Sub-folder.

Everything seemed to work fine, so I went on to sync my music, but then quickly realized 3 shocking things.

No Auto playlists

First, there are no auto-playlists (aka dynamic playlists). For some reason, we decided that it was a good idea to cut this feature. Maybe I’m in the minority here, but why in the world didn’t we ship with this?! This is the bread and butter of my music playing experience and device sync’ing strategy. My primary auto-playlists in iTunes consisted of:

• Recently added
  • Songs added in the last 30 days
• Favorite songs
  • 4 or 5 star ratings songs in any genre
• Favorite <Genre>
  • 3, 4 or 5 star rated songs in a specific genre

With the above playlists, I can listen to music in whatever mood I’m in and easily access all the latest music I’ve purchased. I’ve been using this system for years. Even Windows Media Player had auto-playlists! In scouting the various Zune websites and the official Zune community forum, this feature will be shipped in a future update. They’re even trying to canvas user scenarios, so I don’t think this is coming out any time soon. Let’s keep our figures crossed for something to happen within 6 months.

Re-designed Rating system is a dud?

The second disappointment was the change in rating system. Previously, when I used the Zune software, they used the typical 1-5 star rating system which was consistent with iTunes and WMP. With the latest v2.2 update, however, they changed this to a “Love it” or “Hate it” model. Each song can have exactly 3 values: unrated, Love it, Don’t like it.

They’ve attempted to make it a bit easier by doing some WMP rating translation to their new system. That is, anything below 2 stars is “Don’t like it” and anything above is “Love it”. (Obviously everything unrated is still unrated).

After some digging, I found the personal blog of someone on the Zune team, and found a bit more of an explanation.

Last year, we extensively tested the 0-5 star rating system with users – both on the current system and their potential usage - and learned a few interesting things. First, there was a great degree of confusion between different ratings for different users – e.g. a 3 star rating for one user might mean “I love this song” but for another user, it could mean “this song is just ok.” And when we asked users if they would rate content using the existing system, 90% said that they wouldn’t. So we had to figure out a way to implement a rating system that users both understood and would be likely to use. We tested several different variations, and in the end users gravitated towards the heart/broken heart system, as it put track ratings into more human terms. Hence, the new rating system.

While I always struggled for what it meant for something to be “2-star” rated in a music library, I got used to it. If I didn’t really like a song, why the heck would I have it at all? All my songs in iTunes ended up being either Unrated, 3, 4 or 5 star rated. Nothing was 2 stars. Songs were un-rated because many times I’d buy entire albums because I liked 3 or 4 songs, but never got around to listening to the entire thing. If I didn’t like the other songs when I did listen to them, I’d just delete them.

I also don’t buy the given explanation that across users there wasn’t consistency in the meaning behind ratings. Who cares if my rating definition isn’t the same as everyone else’s? It’s my music library!

Speaking objectively, and without factoring in existing rating systems in iTunes and WMP, I might prefer the new Zune rating system. However, since iTunes and WMP have been around for what seems like forever, has Microsoft been painted into a corner and should just adopt what already exists? What makes things worse is that I thought by going to the Zune I would make my song management easier since it would finally play nice with my Vista Media Center PC. Since Media Center is WMP based, this isn’t the case and I’m essentially stuck with the same problem I had with iTunes.

Auto-collection management no more

The final shocking thing was the omission of auto-collection management. In a nutshell, this is when the software auto-manages your folder hierarchy and filenames based on ID3 tags. iTunes does it, so does WMP. The new Zune software? Hmm.. nope!

Whenever you drag and drop songs into the Zune client, it just adds them from their existing location. So if I have songs on “D:\scratch”, I not only have to copy them to my Zune library location, but also create all the artist\album hierarchy. What a complete pain in the butt. Thankfully I’m not adding as much music to my library as I used to, but this is seriously another huge feature to be missing in a flagship product launch. I’m surprised I haven’t read about this anywhere yet.. perhaps I just haven’t been reading close enough?

Final thoughts

Despite all my gripes about the 3 missing features, I still do really like the Zune. Much of my experience has been colored by the face that I’m migrating off iTunes and have an enormous music collection (nearly 60GB). For the majority of people I know, this migration issue will be, well, a non-issue and I doubt they will notice the changes in ratings (they might even like this simpler method). The lack of auto-playlists will either another polarizing issue — people either use them extensively or not at all, so this will again be another love-it or hate-it issue.

I love the form factor of the Zune 80, it feels much more polished than the Zune v1 and more importantly better than my iPod 30GB Video and even the “new” iPod Classic.

The end-to-end experience from ordering on Zune Originals, insanely quick delivery and high quality physical product make the new Zune a winner in my books. The good news about the missing features? They are clearly on the Zune team’s radar and I bet you that in 6 months, I’ll be making a blog post telling you about how great the changes are. (Note to Zune team: Please don’t make me a liar )

As my usage with the Zune 80 continues, I’ll be sure to update you all with more info. But for now, here’s to hoping I can survive the transition from avid iPod user to Zune dork.

I surely didn’t cover everything about the Zune 80, so if you have a question please ask and I’ll do my best to respond.

After deliberating for a long time, I finally settled on a Mac Mini as my new Home Theater PC (HTPC) to replace the one I custom built 2 years ago that was running XP Media Center.

However, don’t even think for a minute that Mac OS will be running in my house I’ve successfully gotten Vista Ultimate running on the Mac Mini through Bootcamp.

The Mac Mini doesn’t have a built-in TV Tuner, but since I’ve decided to cut off my cable this really doesn’t matter. I spend most of my time listening to music and watching the occasional movie. Since I absolutely love the Vista Media Center interface, it was a no-brainer on which OS I was going to run.

If at a later time I was going to get cable again, there are several options for USB TV tuners out there that everyone seems to like.

I’m absolutely thrilled with this setup and am in complete awe of the genius of Apple’s hardware design. It’s amazing they fit everything they did in such a small package. I contemplated the Shuttle X100 and X200 systems, but the x200 didn’t have gigabit ethernet so it was a non-starter. The X100 was a contender, but ultimately I was dissuaded by Omar whom I trust for a lot of input on my tech decisions (and sometimes my taxes ). Here’s a great quote:

Never buy a Shuttle PC. They are buggy, the BIOS releases are buggy, and if you read the notes for the BIOS you’d understand. If you even read the forums for but a brief moment you’d come to the same conclusion.

Here is some other information in an Q&A style that might help others:

Does the Mac Mini run Vista Ultimate?

Yes! It runs without skipping a beat. It runs full Aero Glass to boot. FYI, I’m running it on the 2.0ghz Core Duo2 model.

What TV are you using? How is it connected?

I have it connected to an NEC 50XR5 50″ Plasma through DVI and it’s running at 1360×768 resolution which is almost dead-on its native resolution. Despite it not being an exact 1:1, all the text is crystal clear and crisp with no extra tweaking required.

I attempted to use HDMI (using a DVI to HDMI converter) but Vista doesn’t recognize the native resolution on my plasma, and instead forces me to have a ton of overscan. I could have fiddled with it more, but decided to go the easy route and stick with DVI. A friend of mine recently sent me some information on custom resolutions with the Intel Graphics cards (which the Mac Mini uses) and points out that my resolution woes have something to do with EDID. I know nothing about EDID and don’t really want to right now, so if anyone figures this out and just wants to tell me the solution, I’m all ears!

What is your audio setup?

I have the Mac Mini connected via optical audio to a Pioneer Elite receiver. The Mac Mini has a weird audio output where it has a combined optical digital audio output *and* headphone jack. In order to connect it to my receiver, I had to buy a TOS-link to mini TOS-link adapter. If you’re going to do this, plan ahead and buy it ahead of time since Apple Store charges an insane $30 for the same converter but attached to a 6ft cable. Criminals!

In order to get AC-3 sound to work with my ripped DVDs, I installed the Vista Codec pack which installs a bunch of codecs to allow you to play videos encoded with all the popular encoders (Xvid, Divx, H.264, etc). The critical piece was that the codec pack also includes AC3-Filter which does the work to get AC3 audio from ripped DVDs through the digital optical audio output.

What are you using for a keyboard and mouse?

I’m using a Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000, which is connects by bluetooth. The keyboard and mouse set is absolute fantastic — compact, ergonomic and mouse is rechargeable. The set comes with a bluetooth USB dongle, but since the Mac Mini has bluetooth built-in, I didn’t need it.

In retrospect I would have liked to have gotten the 8000 series keyboard set since it would make the keyboard rechargeable and it would also be backlit.

What is your network setup?

The Mac Mini is nice since it has gigabit ethernet as well as 802.11b/g. However, sine I am storing all my media on a D-Link DNS-323 NAS, I didn’t want to connect via wifi. Instead, I’m using Cat5e cable to connect through Gigabit ethernet.

For some reason Vista isn’t recognizing Gigabit ethernet speeds and only allowing me to connect at 100-BaseTX. I’ve already done enough troubleshooting to know that the cable, switch and wall jack are all functioning correctly. I figure it must be a driver thing. Anyone else have this problem?

2 days ago I raved about how much I liked the iPhone after Jobs’ Macworld 2007 announcement.  After thinking about it and reading more coverage, the so-called reality distortion field has passed and I’m not feelin’ the iPhone like I previously did.  Call me wishy-washy, but it’s true.  Omar and Torres have both discussed it at great length, and I agree with most of their points.  I’m not going as far as Torres and saying I won’t buy this phone, but there are enough things that concern me about it to at least delay my purchase for a significant amount of time.

After reading Mike’s post, here’s my response:

1. Access to my corporate data over the air – Agree that if this functionality doens’t exist, the device is also a non-starter for me.  However, we haven’t heard definitively that this won’t be possible so let’s keep our fingers crossed.
2. EDGE network speed — while Mike finds Edge “so slow it’s almost unusable for browsing”, I woudl have to disagree. After moving to the Samsung Blackjack recently which sports 3G HSDPA connection, I find myself in Edge-only mode to presrve battery life.  For what I normally browse (yahoo mail, rss feeds, engadget), Edge is clearly slower than 3G/EVDO, but not a deal breaker.
3. Too expensive? People are continually saying this device is too expensive, but I’m still on the fence.  $500-$600 for this device isn’t as outlandish as people claim it is given it’s a full blow iPod but also a phone.  Considering iPods are $200-$300 and phones alone can go upwards of $300, the iPhone price point is right there.  Admittedly, once you factor in the fact that Cingular should be subsizing the price since they are going to lock you into a 2 year contract, you gotta wonder whether Cingular is subsizing anything at all.
4. Touchscreen interface – I was really keen on this originally, but now, I’m going to have to agree with the skeptics.  It looks freakin’ cool, but after you factor in screen scratches and smudges along with the lack of any tactile response, this device could be an absolute nightmare.
5. Closed system – I was all hyped up about the iPhone running full blown OSX since it meant that app developers wouldn’t have to really do much to refactor their apps other than accomodating smaller screen size (unless the iPhone did some clever UI scaling).  But turns out that the iPhone will be a closed platform just like the iPod.   WTF Apple. Haven’t you learned anything at all from anyone else in the industry? Why do you keep doing this?

Other than a cool form factor, the only thing that the iPhone does for me, is allows me to ditch my standalone iPod altogether.  I would always have my ipod on me which would be ultra-convenient, but then again, this means I always have to carry my headphones.  I just know I’d end up in a situation where I have my iPhone with no headphones to listen to music. 

The teedot jury is still out on whether the iPhone will be a winner or not, but what’s certain is that I’m not going to rush out and buy this thing.

Macworld 2007 kicked off today with the Steve Jobs keynote.  Apple definitely delivered on the anticipated hype by delivering on the iPhone:

As always, if you want full covereage do a search or check out Engadget. Why the iPhone is freakin’ cool in tee dot’s book:

• All-in-one device – Cellphone and iPod combined into a single device. Finally I can get rid of burden of carrying my smartphone and iPod at the same time, which means I”ll always have my ipod with me.
• 11.6mm thick — thinner than the Motorola Q and even my new Samsung Blackjack.
• Runs full blown OSX – 3rd party app creation will be far simpler for developers.  No need to scale down apps? woah.
• Proximity sensor — turns off screen and touchscreen interface when it’s close to your face
• World phone enabled – Quad-band GSM
• Push-IMAP Yahoo email — This freakin’ rocks since I use Yahoo as my primary email provider.  I’ve been using them for nearly 5 years and the pain of changing my primary email address is big enough to stop me from doing it
• 4GB and 8GB storage – priced at $499 and $599.   Pricey for a cell phone alone, but considering this double as an iPod, it’s a little more justifiable. But still… $500?!  Will be interesting to see if (1) Cingular reduces the price based on contract, and/or (2) it’s unlocked.  I can’t imaine Cingular agreeing to carry an unlocked device despite the rumours. 
• Google maps integration – I wub Windows Live Maps more, but tight integration with Google Maps is never a bad thing.
• Available through Cingular – since this is my carrier, it’s obviously a good thing

Other minor features I love:

• Visual voicemail — I absolutely hate voicemail since triage is so difficult. This almost makes it palattable.
• SMS conversations – I’m an SMS junkie and showing my SMS exchange in a conversation form is an obvious enhancement. I love it.

I do love my Windows Mobile devices (and my new Samsung Blackjack), but am absolutely in love with the iPhone already.  Gotta love how Apple keeps pushing us.  Always an advantage when you build the hardware along with the Software, which is one of the reasons Microsoft has been so succesful with the Xbox 360  and will be succesful with the Zune.

I’m skiddish on the “multi-touch” UI, as I’m a big fan of the tactile response from a keypad.  I guess I’ll either have to wait for an in-depth review, or just take the plunge and score one when they are available from Cingular in June 2007.

After seeing the Mac Expose feature at the Apple store on the 30″ Widescreen LCD, I fell in love.   Not only does it look incredibly freakin’ cool, but also because it’s a great way to manage all my windows on my desktop in an intuitive way.

For those that aren’t familiar with Mac Expose, it’s a feature on Mac OSX that allows you to:

“Instantly access any open window with a single keystroke — and stunning style that can never be imitated. Display all open windows as thumbnails, view windows of the current application or hide all windows to quickly locate a file on your desktop.“

The feature in particular I love is the display of all open windows as thumbnails. I had to have this feature on XP!

I tried 5 different programs and ultimately found one that seems to fit the picture!

1. Entbloess: This app was crazy buggy, and even crashed on me multiple times.  Needless to say I uninstall this one as quick as I could.
2. Exposer for Windows: This had an approximately 2.5 second delay between keypress and the animation, which doesn’t sound like much, but since I’m installing this for productivity purposes, 2.5 seconds is WAY too long.  To top it off, the thumbnail animation was laughable.
3. Winplosion: Animation is better than Exposer for Windows, but was still slow.
4. Top Desk: More configurable options than the others including ability to have the Flip 3D Windows Vista feature on XP.  Window tiling took WAY too long. This delay was the worst yet.
5. Admiral: This one was the winner of my tests.  Delay is sub-2 seconds on my Sony Vaio VGN-SZ381p (Intel Core Duo2 T7400 with 2GB RAM) and animation was smooth as butter.  You can even specify Window titles that should be excluded from thumbnail view.  I currently have my hot keys setup to be CTRL+Q as well as the upper left corner of my screen.  So if I’m typing, I can activate the thumbnails easily and if I’m on my mouse, I need to just mouse my pointer to top left. Sweet!
6. New: Omar just sent me an email pointing out that the new version of Microsoft Intellipoint has an Expose like feature called “Instant Viewer”.  Once installed, pressing the middle mouse button activates “Instant Viewer”.  Wow, talk about a disappointment.  While it doesn’t have the bugs that Admiral has (see below), the feature set is basically anemic.  It shows all your windows as equal size thumbnails on the screen and when you hover over each, they don’t enlarge nor do they show you the window title like Admiral does.   This won’t be that much of a problem if you don’t have many windows open, but if you’re like me with over 12 windows open at any given time, Instant Viewer just won’t cut it.  See Keith Combs’ blog for screenshot and details.

Here’s a screenshot of the Windows thumbnails/miniaturization in Admiral (#5 above).  Notice my mouse pointer is hovered over Windows Live Writer as I author this blog post:

In my 1/2 day usage of Admiral so far, I noticed 2 bugs and have 4 requests:

• Bugs:
  • When you unlock your computer, Admiral is activated showing all your app Windows tiled.  To top it off, all the window thumbnails are black.  While this is annoying, it’s easily overcome by using the mouse to click on a space between any of the thumbnails. Alternatively you can press <enter>.
  • When no windows are visible and you activate Miniaturization, you get an error dialog that says “Could not start SmallWindows”.
• Wishlist:
  • Every time you show thumbnails, you get a “splash screen” that says “Miniaturization”.  Minor, but annoying.
  • While the delay is sub-2 seconds, I would like to get this faster.  I’m running 2GB of RAM and a crazy fast CPU, com’on!
  • Enable the <ESC> key to dismiss the thumbnail/miniaturization view.  <Enter> currently does this, but <ESC> is more intuitive.
  • For the “”Quick Open” feature, I’d like to be able to assign CTRL+Space bar as my hotkey.

I wish I could give you a link on Windows Marketplace to download this, but alas, we aren’t selling this specific title

PS — I confirmed that Admiral also works on Windows Vista. Just tried it on my co-worker’s Vista machine.