I thought there was supposed to be an easter egg of Steve Balmers face in there.

websyndicate

@DIABOLUSUNKNOWN: It was $10 off at Best Buy if purchased online and picked up in store, along with a free $30 case. Not much, I know, but I'm sure it's on sale through the weekend.

kokodhem

Now that the new zune is opened, any word on how good the audio processor is (for example, if its made by a reputable processor maker, etc)? Thats what im really curious about in an MP3 player, for obvious reasons.

diabolusunknown

@Crashproof: You can paste album art. I had to do it for one album i had that didnt show up. Went to amazon, saved the image, and when i was in the rip tab, i right clicked on the music icon where the album art would be, and loaded it up.

diabolusunknown

Who the hell gets dressed while making a blog post?

And did you get it at a sale price? Where, because i would want a sale price on a brand new device too!

diabolusunknown

the new zune imo are a good ipod alt. no flaws with my product, and the software works fine on my comp not as mediamonkey but c'est la vie. for the radio, the zune uses the earphones as an antenna so that might have been the problem.

dimensionaltrend

While I don't have much interest in a flash drive... the Zune 30 I picked up for $100 is a solid piece of hardware, and the radio works fine.

The software, not so much. Rio's software was much better. Why the new version removed the ability to paste album art, I have no idea. Being able to paste *or* load it from disk would have been great.

Crashproof

@kokodhem: You Dress up AND type at the same time ?! lol...

Bllo

I bought one of these yesterday, as I dislike the new ipods too much to update my 4g 1st gen nano. I'm getting dressed as I write this to go return it to the store. The software barely runs, and has so many flaws it's unusable. While the Zune itself runs fairly well, the hardware just feels shoddy in the hand and has enough problems (radio doesn't work at all, no reception, for example) that it's just not worth it even at sale price. Imo, steer clear.

kokodhem

They could have used plastic l-shaped tabs and the pad could have had holes around the periphery so that it could be snagged on to the tabs and then stretched across and snagged on to the other side as well. Or, a ring that snapped on to the circumference, locking it in place. Dumb.

gee2

so if broken the front bezel, will be expensive to change because the squircle. not good.

AndersonBMX

Irreplaceable sub-assemblies are nothing new, but they are something of a compromise.

Annoying, but not a deal breaker, if I was dealing.

strider_mt2k

Looks like a nice piece of engineering. How does the fact that the pad is irreplaceable make a difference? Do they fail that much?

They melted the pegs to hold the pad to the front cover, but seems to be that screws would have required some metal threads which would have created more thickness.

pdok

Anything worth owning should be worth repairing....

altus

It's counselor not councilor that means another thing. In this context, the former would be the proper spelling of the word.

nintendude

@altus: agree agree *thinks of xbox*

Amiash

I got the older zune 30 and just bought the zune 8 gig for working out - I have found the audio much better than the previous 30 and in fact found myself wanting to listen to them much more than the 30. zunerama states that the reason they removed the eq was to improve fidelity even further...

Which brings me to the point that most of us are complaining about one thing or another vs. the main point - the sound quality. I have had a couple cd's burned for me from itunes and I can say they indeed really sound miserable compared to zune.net or a CD.
fwiw..

Brentis

I doubt if I'll get much therapy from my city "councilor," but a trip to the counselor might do me some good. Yes, I must be a "weirdo," because I like the new Zune!

cameraz