Surprise surprise, Zune sucks.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by lizziebith

(and heard too many horror stories of people losing all the work they'd put into the effort to load their 'Pods, only to have them crash miserably).

That's their fault for not backing up their data (though, after witnessing the death of CP's iPod, I will never buy any disk-based mp-3 player. No moving parts, thank you very much).

[innerSpaceman]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

No moving parts, thank you very much).

I'd have to agree with that proviso.

So what are the candidates of that type? I'm looking to be the late entry into the portable MP3 unit (actually I had a prehistoric one many years ago) and I'd like some other options besides the Nano.

Any recommendations???

[lizziebith]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

That's their fault for not backing up their data (though, after witnessing the death of CP's iPod, I will never buy any disk-based mp-3 player. No moving parts, thank you very much).

Of course they should back up, but my emphasis is really on the high number of people I've known with the problem -- It would be as if almost everyone I knew routinely had their computers' hard drives fail. Of course, that's just anecdotal evidence... But yeah to the not buying disc-based player absolutely. Love my little flash baby!

(iSm -- I have a Creative Zen V-- I didn't get the plus, because I think watching video on a wee little screen is just plain silly, but that's probably just me given the apparent demand driving the production of such features!)

[Alex]

To balance it out, I've not had anybody I know complain about their iPod (unlike actual Apple computers which seem to suffer an unusually high rate of hardware failures).

Here's what I like about mine:

From the moment I walked in the front door to the moment I had music on it was about 10 minutes.

But I'm also far from a power user since in the year I've owned mine it has probably seen about 50 hours of use.

As far as software issues go, keep in mind that if you want, you can wipe the native software off the iPod and install linux based stuff to run everything. I know several of my friends have done that and have the features and tweaks that they like best.