Microsoft Zune?

[spacey]

In the market for a new MP3 player to replace my Creative Zen Touch. (Nothing wrong with it, just old.) Anyone heard anything about the new offering from Micro$oft? I think I read somewhere that it was a Toshiba Gigabeat in disguise, but it apparently plays AAC files and WMA files, which is sort of tempting. Nearly all of my music files are WMA format and the idea of converting 14,000 files is just simply too daunting, so WMA compatibility is a must, but being able to share music with my iPod owning friends might be nice.

Thoughts?

[Uisce Beatha]

Some thoughts...

http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2227

http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2237

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004910.php

I'm obviously coming from a pretty strong "just say no" position when it comes to Microsoft but if I try to be objective I might say...

Positives

• FM tuner.  Fairly cool if you listen to radio (talk/sports/Uncle Joe Benson).
• Micro$oft.  You probably won't have to worry about Zune going under due to lack of capital back.  They HAVE to make this succeed if they want to make headway in the "digital hub/car/room" battle.
• Independents and small labels.  Or at least it's being presented that way.

Negatives

• First generation ANYTHING is probably something to avoid.
• Microsoft admits this is a loss leader (or close to it).  Doesn't give me warm fuzzies.  I don't want to be their guinnea pig as they ramp up over two years to compete with Apple.
• I'll let Burzooom chime in on the whack DRM as he clearly has put a lot of thought into the subject. 
• Crazy azz "social" aspect of Zune is beyond my comprehension.  I have my buds in because I DON'T want to socialize with you.  Don't take it as an invitation to beam me your music.  Could be I'm just too old.
• Brown?   Microsoft just doesn't get ****y.     

Zune might turn out to be an extremely viable product.  But I wouldn't be a v1.0 adopter.

[Uisce Beatha]

Then again, perhaps this in itself is enough to turn you off...

Ballmer

"I want to squirt you a picture of my kids. You want to squirt me back a video of your vacation. That's [an] experience," he said.

[spacey]

Thanks Uisce, that's pretty much what I was looking for. Leaning Creative Zen Vision: M at this point, but I hate to limit myself to simply Creative, if there are other good options out there.

[Aske]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=104

not even compatible with Vista !! ROTF


but seriously, i'm sure  version 3.2 or so will be a great product,  DRM'ing aside.

that said, its a microsoft problem, so I bet it will be totally hax0rable and moddable.