Ardent Meridian

What an absolute cluster-fuck.

Re-subscribing to ZunePass has been a epic mistake.  Well, okay, a $15 mistake.  Not really epic considering I drive an Aston Martin, which drinks gas to the tune of $0.50/mile at full chat, but still, $15 simply pissed away.

I really enjoyed my 1.0 Zune device on the original Zune software.  It was only my desire not to carry more than one device on a daily basis, combined with no 64-bit support, that stopped me using it.  Well … that and the fact that every other piece of music I wanted was either simply absent from the Zune marketplace entirely, or was for purchase only (and excluded from access via the subscription plan).

Sorry, but hardware wise the Zune is a poor alternative to any incarnation of the iPod, and especially when stacked against the iPhone.

This week I installed Zune 3.0 and tried out the new marketplace and the new features of the Zune device.  My Zune hardware is the original unit, and full kudos to Microsoft for providing full feature parity for it with current devices.

Sadly the entire experience has been a complete cluster-fuck.

The Zune 3.0 software is glacially slow when accessing server resources (on a 15 Mb/s connection), even slower than iTunes, which has to be wrong as iTunes on Windows is slow enough to piss me off all on its own, even though it otherwise works perfectly.

After installing Zune 3.0 my shutdown times went from ~60 seconds (usually less) to 8 MINUTES!  CONSITENTLY! What the hell are you doing Microsoft?  The moment I uninstalled that piece of shit my shutdown times went right back down to <60 seconds.

Not to mention that after having my machine powered up for, oh, 24 hours (I typically only reboot on patch-Tuesday) the system simply failed to recognize my Zune begin connected at all.  You know, until I tried to shut the machine down, and then it pitched a conniption fit about my device being connected …

Oh really?  Why the hell did your shitty software not recognize it when it WAS attached then?

Twats.

Oh, and what is with Windows Live Messenger being periodically reloaded if you install the latest Zune software?  WLM 2009 is an epic piece of of shit in its own right, why the fuck Zune 3.0 keeps trying to reload it is beyond me.  There is no reason for it (I will not give it credentials to log-in) and it serves ONLY to piss away more memory than is already needed.

Maybe if WLM was not stuck in a time-warp to a point where even Yahoo! messenger had surpassed it in utility, oh, I don’t know, 3 years ago … it would be relevant.  But now it just shrieks of desperation.

Can’t get people to use it on its own merits, so force something else to “require” it huh?

No wonder the EU is so far up your ass you need prescription antacids.

The end result of this?

• I am out $15 for a 1-month Zune Pass that never made it past 24 hours because it was, simply, epically unusable.
• I am out $150 for a 1.0 generation Zune device that just got bounced off my deck, repeatedly, until the display was a miasma of liquid-crystal chaos and the embedded hard-disc was making sounds like an over-ripe pigeon being slowly fed into the waste disposal.
• My machine now shuts down in under a minute again, unlike the 8+ minutes it needed with Zune 3.0 software installed.
• No more Windows Live Messenger being repeatedly re-loaded even though I keep quitting it and denying it account access credentials.  Seriously, are you trying to emulate Real Networks here or what?  Grow the fuck up … you achieve nothing but annoyance by continually trying to leverage your own products when I am clearly NOT using them!
• I still think subscription music is a great way to go, just not sufficiently persuasive to be worth putting up with the bullshit that is the Zune 3.0 experience on Vista x64.  Especially given that two iPods and an iPhone with iTunes work flawlessly on the same machine.

Maybe things are different in an x86 environment.  Maybe there is something weird with my configuration.  But the ONLY device or software that has exhibited the slightest issue on this setup is the Zune 3.0 software (a pain in the ass all on its own) and my Zune 1.0 30 GB device. And those issues were enough to ensure I will never even consider another music player from Microsoft, let alone allow anything with the “Zune” brand anywhere NEAR my machine in the future.

It is a sad commentary that the most entertainment I was able to glean from my Zune 1.0 under the Zune 3.0 software was smashing the thing to pieces.  And this was something I bought myself.  My own, hard-earned, money.  I was so annoyed with the thing that I wanted to ensure there was never any chance that I would ever waste so much as another second on the entire Zune concept.

There is a reason Apple owns your ass in this space, and that is, simply, their shit actually WORKS!  I personally think the subscription music approach is the future, but it is a dismal future if it involves this sort of aggravation.  Honestly, I think the iPod line will see a subscription music service option LONG before Zune gets to the point where it is worth the hassle.

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