my name is not matt

I try so hard to give Microsoft a chance. Though nearly all my pho­tog­ra­phy and cre­ative arts friends urge me to get a Mac­Book Pro, I’ve been hang­ing in there with my Win­dows Vista-running Toshiba lap­top. (I would say note­book, but this big 17″ widescreen Jimmy takes up my whole lap!) Like­wise, my friends look at my side­ways when I talk about lust­ing for a Motorola Droid, Android OS, smart­phone. “Just get an iPhone,” they say.  Finally, I fre­quently have answer the ques­tion, “What’s a Zune?” when I pull out my per­sonal media player (PMP).


Now, let me clar­ify that I am, in no way, a Microsoft-fan boy or a stock­holder. The use of Microsoft-driven prod­ucts, quite hon­estly, has mostly been more about eco­nom­ics. The lap­tops and phones are less expen­sive that Apple alter­na­tives. 


That didn’t nec­es­sar­ily hold true, how­ever, for the Zune. I picked up the 120gig Zune for the same price as a com­pa­ra­ble iPod. My son has a Zune, too. What attracted me to the Zune was the large, bright screen, sleek design. The biggest draw, t hough, was the Zune Mar­ket­place sub­scrip­tion. For $15 a month, I get unlim­ited down­loads of music. It should be noted that this music is only avail­able as long as you have a Zune Mar­ket­place sub­scrip­tion. You also get 10 “free” down­loads to keep each month. I have been using the Zune for just about a year, and enjoy the access to unlim­ited music. Even if I lose it when  my sub­scrip­tion ends, I was able to enjoy a lot of music for $15 a month. Not a bad deal. 


Sorry, back to the point of this post. While I have enjoyed the Zune and the ser­vice, the prob­lems with the hard­ware has started to creep up on me. First my son’s Zune started to act up, and even­tu­ally just died on him. I sent it back to the Microsoft and they sent us a new one. So far, so good with the new unit. (For­get that he dropped it and cracked the screen. Argh!) Now, my Zune has been act­ing up. First it was strange spikes of the vol­ume, and the occa­sional inabil­ity to prop­erly use the direc­tion pad. Recently, I’ve noticed some­thing very odd.

What the…?!!? This weird, phan­tom menu scrolling ren­ders the device nearly use­less until it’s shut down and restarted. I have repeat­edly checked the WiFi set­tings to make sure the Zune wasn’t being affected by stray or over­lap­ping sig­nals from another device. No dice. A lit­tle Google search revealed quite a few peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing the same prob­lems. Ugh.


So much for con­sid­er­ing the Zune HD, which was launched a cou­ple of months ago. I am really start­ing to think that any­thing attached to Microsoft oper­at­ing sys­tems are doomed for fail­ure. I expect that when I pay $300 for a PMP or $1200 for a lap­top, it’s going to work out of the box and for the fore­see­able future. I refuse to become a Kool-aid sip­ping, Apple cultist, but there’s some­thing to be said about pay­ing for qual­ity. You buy cheap,  you buy twice.


I may just be look­ing at a bun­dle of Apple prod­ucts in the near future. Not because I am try­ing to be styl­ish or part of the in-crowd. No, I am likely headed to an Apple store because, by all that I’ve read and heard, their prod­ucts just work.