PC World Puts Zune in Disappointments Article

Print media doesn't seem to be that favorable to the Zune right now as they publish their year end gadget lists. First Popular Mechanics bashes Microsoft's player in its Worst Gadgets of 2007 article. Now comes the freshly published 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007 from venerable publication PC World and yes, you guessed it, the Zune makes the list.

PC World ranked the Zune number 11 in its countdown, titling the section Singing an Old Familiar Zune. The magazine does give the Zune some good marks, but mainly knocks the player for Microsoft's failure to "lose the Zune's proprietary DRM scheme or remove all its restrictions on wireless music sharing."

Doesn't it seem to have become a common theme to bash the Zune despite it getting better reviews in generation 2.0? Is it a thing against Microsoft in general or is there just a common theme that the iPod will always be better than anything else out there?

Comments

[rex]

cancelling my subscription to that rag PC World

[Zuner]

Unfortunately, Zune is just a competent music player that went a year between intro and overhaul. While the overhaul was very successful in that it added needed features and flash memory, it just brought the Zune up to yessterdays standards in most ways. Many of the changes were cosmetic at best. It doesn't help to have Wi-Fi if your only using it in very limited ways. Microsoft is banking on The Social to lure people into the Zune fold and its just not enough. To get large numbers of people to jump they need to really kick it with something awesome like on-line music purchasing, more video content, and artist collorations that get people new music more often with multi-media versions complete with album notes and videos only available through Zune. Make the social real by allowing share groups that can exchange music freely. maybe you can designate 10 friends that you can share with to your hearts content. Also the way Microsoft charges for music blows. I don't want to put money in their hands until I find something to buy, just charge it against my CC like iTunes.

[Chris]

Ya the DRM restrictions are still an issue and maybe the 3 plays could be doubled (or gotten rid of). But did u check out that the iphone was ranked at #5? in my opinion apple deserved that for bricking my friends phone after he bought it on day 1.

[Patrick]

drm? please people, while i certainly dont like "ms points" in the zune marketplace, its not like ms is the only one touting drm anymore. last i checked, being a long-time (3+ years) itunes user, apple is still plenty full of drm, with their "plus" (drm free, higher quality) selection still very small. ive been a big fan of ipods until the new 80gb classic. if anything is a disappointment, its that! ive had a 30gb video for just short of two years now, and after two years all apple did was make the front metal, increase the capacity, and add cover flow! wtf?! if thats not a disappointment, i dont know what is; my money was far better spent on my new zune 80.