Toronto - So it’s been exactly 60 days since I last reviewed the Zune, and now we are at part 2. Why the long delay between reviews? Well, I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. Here is a link to the first part of the review, if you want to refresh your memory.

2 Month Review - I can’t remember the last time I turned my 8 gig Ipod Nano on. Srsly. I’m not saying the Zune is drastically better, but it’s definitely better to the point where I don’t think about my Ipod anymore. The sound is good, the build is sturdy, battery life is good (although I think the Nano’s is better) and it has not broken yet.

Wireless part

Basically, the wireless part of the Zune is part of the ‘Social’ experiment, which, in a perfect society, everyone would have zunes and share music with each other, creating some sort of close knit community where music, video and pics flow seamlessly from one person to the next. However, in three months, I have seen only one person not named Mark with a Zune, and he was watching anime on the subway, so I didn’t want to ‘add him as a friend’. However, imagine that person was some cute chick wearing a britpop t-shirt. In order to send her music, I would need do

a) turn on wireless
b) search for people in surround area
c) pick the person from the list (probably of one) that shows up
d) select the song I want to send

then this screen would show up:

Of course, she would be like ‘wtf is kazey’ but curiosity kills the cat, so she’ll accept it, which brings up this screen:

The speed is quite impressive, and most songs will send in roughly a minute or so. Once the song is sent, this screen shows up

Of course, if I had one song to impress someone with, The Enemy - It’s Not OK, would not be the song, but I concocted this article after i took the pictures, so we’ll make do. Look at the picture above. What is the problem? 3 PLAYS REMAIN. Yup. That’s the damn government imposing their will on our artsy utopia. But what else can you do.

Conclusion: Basically, the idea is great based on the premise that a) there are a lot of zune users around and b) people are willing to accept complete mp3s from strangers. However, neither of these ideas are really realistic at this point of the Zune’s lifeline, but maybe in the future this will be useful. It’s not bad if your friend has a zune though, but what are the odds of that at the moment?

Video testing: I did not test the video, since the screen is too small and if you watch videos on your zune/nano at that screen size, you are pretty lame.

Final Conclusion
The Zune has replaced my Ipod, what can I say? I like the improve audio, the look and feel of the unit, fm tuner and the way the album displays when you are playing a mp3. Sure the accompanying software is incredibly frustrating to install and the social aspect is really a moot point, but to me the good outweighs the bad and I recommend it if you are looking for a sub 200$ mp3 player.