Zune First Look — Not

It’s been a week since I bought my Zune player and some people have asked me when I was going to review it. Well, I can say safely that I like the player, it has good sound with my third-party headphones and it’s easy to operate. But the part I most wanted to write about — the way the player interacts with the Zune software and Zune Marketplace/Zune Pass — is still a giant question mark. So far, even though I had no problem downloading playlists and albums from MTV Urge, the system Zune Marketplace mirrors in tech respects, I have yet to complete a download without an error or a complete crash let alone get it onto the device. I’ve been through two bouts of tech support — the nicest people with no answers you could hope to meet — and even escalated up to level three with a promise someone would be in touch. That last was Sunday night.
Meanwhile, I can tell you the one area where Zune slips bigtime for a Microsoft product: online tech support. If an error has been seen often enough to have a number, then it should show up when I search support. If hovering over the little info icon next to a failed download promises an answer, the next link shouldn’t be to a generic support URL. I know from talking to the tech support people that they’ve been swamped; at one point, they couldn’t even get the system to assign me a report number. Surely, a lot of the issues that pop up whenever a large batch of people are logging on with something new could be avoided by having better online support to start.
Will I keep it long enough to see if I like the whole ecosystem? If I weren’t a stubborn gadgethead it would already be back at the store.
Update: I had voice mail from tech support this afternoon. No answer to the problem yet but they wanted me to know they were still looking into it. Like I said, nice people.

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