Zune review : Zune Wi-fi connection explained

We had some clarifications from David Caulton at Zunester on what to expect from the Zune Wi-fi connection.

We clearly have a more limited “music sharing space” that we thought we could have! At least at launch! The 3 scenarios that Zune users will have when they first buy their Zune are the following:

• Search for nearby Zune owners to interact with.

• Send a song or album for a limited 3-day/3-play trial listen. Songs come over with metadata and album art. After the trial, the song gets deleted from the Zune on the next sync, but the info on the song stays in a "journal" on your PC for later purchase or acquisition.

• Send photos for unlimited viewing (and these can sync back onto the recipient's PC).

David said “The wireless happens to be Wi-fi but Zunes will not (at launch) connect to the internet via your home base station network. Zunes can not download songs over the air from the internet service."

The most important missing parts are the ability to stream content directly to your Zune Marketplace subscription and to sync your Zune with your PC thru your Wi-fi connection.  The “Zune pass” that gives you unlimited access to all the music from the Zune Marketplace for a flat fee ($14.99/month) is a lot less attractive without the ability to stream the content directly to the Zune.

Sharing the content from Zune to Zune may be nice but it looks a lot more like a promotional feature for the Zune Marketplace than a real user oriented feature.  The user manual took from the fcc filling says “you will be able to send and receive promotional copies of songs”. For a majority of zune users, the Wi-fi connectivity will stay off forever. A community is nice but if it is to share ads, Microsoft won’t go too far with that one.

David added “Trust us, Zune to Zune community isn't the only thing on our list. Once you've got a Wi-fi stack in the devices, the list of fun scenarios is overwhelming. We're just going to take some time to really get them right and roll them out when they're mainstream simple.”

Maybe we can give them a chance to see how fast they are going to add the missing features to the Zune device. They mentioned that the Zune firmware was upgradeable, so early adopters won’t get caught with an obsolete device within 3 months. It is strange tough that the most wanted features are the ones that would be the highly battery consuming ones. They may have a power problem more than a software problem. Read

Check these other Zune reviews.

Comments

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POST A DATE OF PUBLICATION YA' STUPID!

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and by that I mean year ya' big dumb