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Ok, I think I officially have the worst luck with music electronics especially when I stray away from the motherships. I can count two other times when I strayed away: (1) the iRiver (fell into the toilet of my gym) and (2) the Sansa (dead battery). So I’ve given up until recently when a free Zune fell into my lap (thanks Gil).

So let me tell you about the experience.

First of all, I looooved the Zune. The amount of good reviews for alternative iPod products are definitely lacking and when there is a good one, its plagued with a bunch of “go get an ipod and it’ll give you a UI related orgasm” comments. Well I’m here to say that If you’re looking for an alternative to an Apple product then the Zune is definitely a strong gadget.

Why? Let me count the ways.

Wireless sync is the ish! I actually can’t believe that this is the first MP3 player that I’ve encountered that could sync sans cable over an 802.11 connection. It’s been long overdue in my opinion. The Zune was a bit slow when it came to actually sync’ing but I can’t tell you how cool it is to sit in the bedroom (or bathroom – whatever floats your boat I guess), sync and listen to the most up-to-date podcasts.

The interaction with the player was pleasant (at least with the new version). It behaved as I expected. I slide my finger or click on the buttons and the player moves through without surprises. Taking into account that I’m pretty familiar with my iPhone menus, it only took a few minutes to get used to the Zune’s. The touchpad also had a tactile feel which is different from a smooth screen.

The cons:

The Zune software sucks and iTunes it is not. I do believe that one of the iPod’s strength comes from the iTunes software that partners with it. I do like iTunes so please note my bias. I use it quite often: downloading music, managing the mp3 files/id3 tags and playing media (video, radio and music). The Zune software is unintuitive to do any of those anything. Actually, I tried to purchase some music and I couldn’t figure it out (all the help docs pointed to a Zune market place which didn’t exist in the menu for me). I do believe that the Zune people need to start redefining their audience a bit better and change their software accordingly.

So will I be using the Zune in the future? No, why? The hardware died on me today. It won’t start up anymore and is behaving like a really light paperweight. I realize that I have the worst luck with electronic products but having it for 3 weeks and die is ridiculous. I didn’t even get to try out any of the social networking features. So if someone else wants to send me a new Zune in the mail then I’d definitely be using it and trying it out more. *hint*