Hey first of all, great pic. You should probably pay him for that :-)

second, i just got my Zune and I just have to say woooow!!!! Am am so confused as to why anyone would hate the zune. It defintely looks and feels better than an iPod. I am convinced most people haven't even touched the player and are just pelting it with stones coz they are scared of iPods marketshare beign cut into. All i have to say is Zune is definetely going nowhere. Once word of mouth spreads people are gonna catch onto the player. The ONLy problem I had was with the software, ut thats not sucha biggie coz i eventually got it to work. wow, excellent work zune, i love it. Watch out Apple...it's inevitable, just like osny. MS doesn't give up...sorry!

Background isn't tiled. So, I have white bars on the side of the screen when using my wide screen laptop :)

I don't see a pic or a link??? Am I missing something here?

NVM...guess I should have read the post closer

WOW! That background pic is REALLY cool!  Very nice!!

Nice work Damien lad, nice work.

Franco: "but thats not sucha biggie coz i eventually got it to work." And therein lies the problem with the Zune. The iPod and its software just works. Every time. 95% of people aren't technical enough to "get it to work", and will therefore give up on the Zune.

The software MUST just work, EVERY TIME. This is where Microsoft will consistently fail, and this is why a consumer product for the masses produced by Microsoft will never achieve 75% market share.

<i>The iPod and its software just works. Every time.</i>

Allow me to invalidate your assertion by submitting that at times, both my iPod and my iTunes install did not, in fact, <i>just work</i>.  And I know what I am doing.

As a programmer, I can assure you that no non-trivial software in existence HAS just worked, EVERY TIME.  If your point, however, is that end-user ease of use should be the paramount focus for a DAP and its software...I think you're going to have problems finding people arguing against that.

Nice pic.. good to see MelBurners getting repped.. I think this shot is from the old Nestle soup factory next to Richmond station

umbrage: Fair point, but as I'm a Mac user I do actually tend to find that my software works, first time and every time. If it doesn't work - that is, if I've downloaded some cruddy piece of code - I just trash the file. No pain, no reboot.

My point is that until Microsoft's offerings are easy to use for people like my mam & dad, they're going nowhere in the mass consumer market. My parents have a Windows machine and every other week the thing is down. I'm not exaggerating. Patches, viruses, the internet connection is on the wonk, whatever - I'm constantly hearing that "the lad from up the road is coming tomorrow to look at the computer". That's unacceptable, and indicative of the reason that the Zune will never reach iPod levels of popularity - it's just too hard for normal people.

nice work damo... sweet photo

smash it up ;)