In case you were wondering: the reason I haven’t been blogging is because I’ve become a boring person. A more boring person than before, that is. When you’re boring, it’s really hard to fake being interesting, especially on the internet where plagiarism can be verified.
I’ve also become an annoying person, so I’m doing you a double favour here by staying away from the “Publish” button. Boring and annoying is a bad combination. You could add smelly for a trifecta of suck, but I did just have a shower, not that you’d know this.
I’m boring and annoying because all I’ve been doing lately is either working or worrying about work or worrying that I’m working too much or worrying that I’m worrying about work too much. And not sleeping. And worrying about how I’m not getting enough sleep. The realization that this is a recursive pattern of FAIL isn’t enough to break me from it.
I’m supposed to give a review about the Zune mp3 player I got free from Matchstick.ca a few weeks back, but the only way I could make it run was to put wheels on it and push it down a hill. The damn thing insists on Windows XP/Vista as its home base OS of choice, which hardly makes it an “iPod killer” since Mac users are shit outta luck and iTunes runs on both Macs and PCs. Oh, and the iPod has been reverse-engineered by Linux geeks, but the Zune 1. has fewer interested hackers, and 2. has proven to be a bloody nuisance and so far impossible to hack due to DRM and authentication protocols (from what I read).
I took the Zune to my dad’s to install the software on his PC. I waited over half an hour for the software to install (Dad’s computer is S-L-O-W) and then at the end I got the error message above. Grr. But since Dad was more interesting than me being mad at Microsoft I gave up trying to fix it after another ten minutes and spent the rest of the day with him.
I then decided to put a virtual version of Windows XP on my Ubuntu machine at work, using Virtualbox, to run the Zune software. Installed Virtualbox. Installed Windows XP in Virtualbox. Spent hours downloading and installing all the fucking service packs for XP. Installed the Zune software. Was installing drivers to allow XP to detect the USB ports (the last step) when somehow I broke Ubuntu. I rebooted and it wouldn’t get past the login screen. I rebooted again and it wouldn’t even get there. The sysadmin at work couldn’t help me so I spent most of last Monday reinstalling Ubuntu; and I had to work into the evening once it was up again. I am now avoiding putting XP on my work computer again as I feel the gods are telling me to stay away from the System Idle Process.
So far this Zune review is a FAIL, potentially EPIC should I try again and not manage to get the thing running. The device (which is so light it even sucks as a paperweight) is taunting me with a list of features on its screen, but if I try to click on anything it tells me to go to www.zune.net. Which is sad since it’s supposedly got a built-in FM radio and it shouldn’t need the internet for that, what with radio waves being in the air and all. Maybe it just doesn’t like me.
Wow and I just got done raving about how much I love my Zune compared to iDevices.
They’re good – give em a chance! 
Best review evar.
if you really hate Zune, you can give it to me
! haha
Hey grumpypants, you really ran out of luck there.
First you got a music player that had the gall not to be from the big monopoly audio player family, and then all of the puters in your life had the gall to not natively run the monopoly OS.
Luckily there is a growing Zune community. The hacks, much like the truth, are out there, and eventually we’ll get software for the Zune, just like it happened with the iPod (whenever I’m forced to deal with the two iPods in my life (Mrs K’s and mother-in-law M’s) I enjoy using Winamp instead of the puter-serial-killer-iTunes).
Jan:
Microsoft is still dumb for not making the Zune software cross-platform. And the reason the computers in my life don’t run Windows is because I specifically removed Windows from my life. I don’t miss it.
Have you looked into the Zune hacker forums? All I’m seeing is people talking about how they’ve hit a brick wall in that they can see what mp3s are on the Zune, but they can’t copy files to or from it. And there aren’t as many hackers working on this as there were on the iPod, so I don’t see things moving along so quickly.
Oh, and if you used a Mac, you’d like iTunes. It only sucks on Windows. I used to use Winamp, too, which I think you can use to copy mp3s to your iPod.
But you get that it sounds a bit like sour grapes, right? You make a conscious effort to run away from Windows and then you grumble when Microsoft doesn’t go the extra mile to service the various operating systems that share the 5% of the world’s personal puters that don’t run MS Windows.
So Microsoft is “dumb” as in [they made an unintelligent choice], or “dumb” as in [their choice annoys you]?
Your defense of iTunes (that it only sucks on Windows) kinda sounds like Apple is trying to do two platforms at once (after four years of being Apple only, by the way), and aren’t able to pull it off. But of course Microsoft are better software experts, and the biggest software providers for the Apple OS’es so maybe they can handle that one.
Trouble is, they’re not really that interested in doing it, of course.
Yes, I have looked into the Zune hacker forums, and I’ve tried a couple of the hacks with limited success. This is clearly early stages for the Zune, and the geeks are just finding their way at the moment.
Yes, I use Winamp to manage the music libraries on those two Apple players. First thing I did when I got the Zune was to check if Winamp supported it, but unfortunately not yet. But it’s actually only recently that you can reliably control iPods on PCs (with Winamp or otherwise). There were several competing third-party apps and Winamp extensions until one was bought (or adopted or whatever) by the Nullsoft people and then suddenly Winamp made the whole thing look easy.
Hey, I love a good discussion about how both users and providers choose (and “should choose”) standards… can you tell?
I did this kind of thing for my Information Systems degree(s).
Oops, I was too quick about iTunes being Apple-only for four years.
The software was written and released for Macs in 1999 and only started supporting Windows four years later, yes. But it was only called iTunes after Apple bought it, changed the interface, added CD writing and put it on the market as iTunes in 2000. So strictly speaking iTunes was Mac-only for three, not four years.
Jan: If I didn’t already know that you specifically like to be argumentative and create drama, I’d continue the Microsoft vs Apple debate, and whatever else, with you. So I’m not going to. It’s a stupid argument, anyways, like political affiliation and religion. Nobody’s ever going to budge an inch or concede a point, especially not you.
I think that expecting companies to create software for the linux platform is not always reasonable.
Expecting to be able to use devices on any platform, maybe using software written by someone else, is. Why lock down the devices that we buy? It’s annoying! If it weren’t for the decent interfaces on the i[Players] I wouldn’t own them.
Death to DRM!