Portable media players

I’ve always viewed the growth of the portable music player market – and Apple’s dominance – with an amazed but largely uninvolved eye. My impression of Apple is that its products are well designed but expensive, and stuffed with so much proprietary content and limitations that I avoid it like the plague despite my almost equal dislike of Microsoft (better the devil I know than the one I don’t).

My own foray into this arena was purchasing a simple 1GB Creative mp3 player a few years ago. This particular mp3 player met all my criteria. First, the player is small enough to use in the gym. Second, it plays mp3s. Third, it doesn’t require the installation of anything on my computer. Fourth and last, it uses batteries I can easily purchase and replace myself.

The Creative mp3 player has worked great for what I want it to do. I still have it and it still works but… recently the yen for something more, with more memory and video capability has begun to appeal to me. Recently I was on a business trip and during my free time I was often quite bored. I’d been to that particular city before – I had no desire to do touristy things or have to lug purchases on the plane that I could just as easily buy back home. The idea of a portable player that can carry my entire music collection and play videos (no matter how tiny the screen) has appeal.

So with changing needs by necessity my criteria have also changed. As larger-capacity players I considered use integrated batteries, I crossed my fingers and gave up on replaceable ones. I also don’t need one to use it in the gym; I have my old one for that. A new criterion is that it plays both common music and video formats.

My original third criterion was based in part on worries about software compatibility, computer resource issues and security. A new computer (I'm connected) and some research alleviated my concerns.

I’ve been told some people running iTunes on Windows Vista have had problems with their computers locking up. That crossed off iPods were I so inclined. I’ve had too much trouble with 3rd party ‘Vista-certified’ software (Vista-certified, are you sure?) to even consider the risk of running an Apple product on a Windows O/S. Heck, forget 3rd party software. I had more than enough trouble just trying to get Vista and Microsoft software running properly (Windows Vista; Computer Woes).

So where does that leave me? My first stop whenever I want to see what’s out there is CNET. There I learned that Microsoft had recently released the second iteration of the Zune – the first of which I had only heard negative things about. Anywhoo, the 2nd generation Zune, the Zune 80, here and elsewhere had mostly positive reviews.

So there we go: my quest for the Zune 80.