The loony Zune

As everyone gears up for Christmas, expensive gadgets and gizmos are on parade and making demands that you buy them for loved ones. Among these is the new Zune mp3 player, Microsoft's answer to the iPod and apparently quite a rubbish piece of technology:

Chicago Sun-Times: "Yes, Microsoft's new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I've spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face. "Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

The setup process stands among the very worst experiences I've ever had with digital music players. The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal, I found myself asking my office goldfish, "Has it really come to this? Am I really about to manually create and install a .dll file?" But there it was, right on the Zune's tech support page. Is this really what parents want to be doing at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning?"