ZuneHD First Impressions

My gift of a 16GB ZuneHD arrived this evening. I took it out of the box, took it out of the plastic and turned it on. I was immediately wowed (I even said "wow") by the clarity and sharpness of the screen. I played the pre-loaded video and was Blown Away!

I fiddled with it a little more and noticed that, unlike previous versions since 2.0, there is no "Podcasts" option on the main menu. I suspect it may show up if I actually load some on there (it did) but can't imagine why it got dropped off.

I took it back to my PC and plugged it in and waited. And waited some more. Then you know what I did? I waited. I waited for Vista to decide what to do about installing a driver. Have I mentioned today that I hate Vista? I can't wait to get Win7.

It finally installed the driver... and told me to reboot. There's another 5 minutes down the tubes.

After the reboot, I plugged it back in at which time it proceeded to install the driver. Say what? Luckily, it must have just been finishing up because it only took a few seconds before it was ready and launched the Zune software (I downloaded the 4.0 software the day it came out). Then I waited about a minute for the Zune software to recognize the device and... tell me I needed to update the software on the device before I could continue. It's only been out a couple of weeks and already there's an update?

I waited ten minutes for my slow-ass internet connection to download 30% of the update and finally decided I was hungry enough that I just left it to do its thing and went to Sonic.

When I got back, the update was complete and I was asked to provide a name for the device. My first Zune, the 4GB I got a couple of years ago, was named Gozer. Like in Ghostbusters. I kept growling out "Zune" like the critter in the fridge growls out "Zuul" so I thought it appropriate. I had no idea what to call this one. I tried a couple and eventually landed on Geektoy but that may change if I (or someone else) comes up with something better.

Once the device was setup, I went to the playlists and commenced it to synchronizing. It's still working on it after about an hour. :)

More later as I discover more of its doo-dads and widgets.