Microsoft Zune Or Apple Ipod?, which is better? please un-bias answers.?

Question

Is there a 2nd gen Zune comming out soon?

Answer 1

Go with the Microsoft Zune. You get more bang for your buck. I have a Zune and I love it. My friend has an IPod and she recently got a Zune and likes it better. If you use Limewire, you can download any movie or video in mp4 format and it will play on the Zune. I don't have any special software and my Zune works great. I prefer the Zune because it doesn't use a touchpad. I believe that a 60gb is on it's way. I think that right now the 30gb Zune is the largest available.

Answer 2

I prefer the iPod. Although the Zune seems to have more features, they end up not being all that great. The only really positive one is the radio, and personally, I don't want to listen to the radio - that's why I bought an iPod.

The Zune has WiFi capabilities, but it doesn't sync with your computer via WiFi - it only uses the WiFi to "squirt" (Microsoft's term) songs to other Zunes. That's okay if you know a lot of people with Zunes, but if you don't it's useless. Even the music sharing thing is limited. You can only listen to a song that someone else gives you three times in three days, and anything more than about a minute counts as one time.

The Zune's screen is bigger, but so is the whole thing, so it's kind of bulky - doesn't really fit in a pocket like the iPod does. Even though the screen is bigger, Microsoft doesn't sell any movies or videos so you have to find them somewhere else, and you need conversion software. iTunes offers hundreds of movies and thousands of videos, in addition to 3.5 million songs (Zune Marketplace has about 2 million songs).

Speaking of buying songs - Zune has songs for 79 points, and the points cost about 1.25 cents each, so a song costs about 99 cents. But you have to buy the points in blocks of $5 or more. iTunes sells songs for 99 cents - no points, no gimmicks, no calculations. Zune also has a ZunePass where you pay $15 and download all the songs you want. At the end of the month it automatically renews for another $15. If you cancel your subscription, though, you lose every song you downloaded. Personally, I've spent about $70 on iTunes in the past year, and $60 of it was for videos. I have so many CD's that I've put on the iPod, I don't have any interest in paying an extra $300 a year (with tax). I do continue to buy CD's, but I belong to BMG and I seldom pay more than $7 for a CD (including shipping). That's much cheaper than the cost of purchasing the music through iTunes or Zune Marketplace, plus I have the CD, so I don't have to worry about DRM. Also, the quality of the sound of a downloaded song is not as good as one from your own CD.

The iPod can be used as a portable storage drive. You can copy files to it (any files - documents, spreadsheets, presentations) and transfer them to another PC. The Zune cannot do this.

There's just more stuff to go with the iPod. The Zune is new, and manufacturers of all of the accessories are waiting to see if it sticks around before they spend too much money supporting it. The iPod has a 79% market share, while the Zune has less than 2%. That means that 79% of people who own MP3 players have iPods. Accessories for the iPod are everywhere - they even plug directly into some cars, and it's expected that within 10 years, nearly every new car on the market will be iPod ready.

Finally, iPods are available in a range of prices, from $79 on up to $349. It just depends on how you want to use it, and how much you want to spend. If you're just going to listen to a few songs while you're jogging, get an iPod shuffle. If you want more songs, but don't care about video, try the nano. Want video or have a huge music library? Try the 30GB iPod. Have tons of music, video, photos, etc. and want to carry it ALL with you? Get the 80GB iPod.

Answer 3

I would say go with the Zune. I have one and I love it. Some of my friends have iPods and they always tell me they wish they had Zunes. iPods scratch really easily and the Zunes are scratch resistant. Also I like how you can customize your background to put any picture you want as the background. And with iPods you have the same plain white boring background. The sharing feature is really cool also. I haven't had any major problems with my Zune yet. It ocasionally restarts but then it will start up after about 10 seconds. I have the black zune and the doubleshot effect is really cool. the edges of the player light up blue when your in light. And I'm not sure about the second generation zune but i know they are making a Zune Phone.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/zune-phone-its-coming-233264.php

I hope this helps you make your decision.

Answer 4

I have an Ipod and a Zune. I prefer the Zune. I never could get used to the Ipod touch controls. Also, Zune comes with Wi-Fi for sharing, and even FM radio. If you have an Xbox360 it will link to it.

Answer 5

well Jeff, my oppinion Microsoft Zune is deffinately better because the screen is bigger. it has the same quality as an Ipod, but if you want something a little smaller/thinner then I would go for the Ipod

but the zune, its hard to find movies because you have to get this special software but if you want to go through all that stuff just for a bigger screen, it isnt worth it.

Answer 6

Zune because of the larger screen, better battery and video formats