The harddrive on my 30gb iPod photo has been giving me more and more problems lately. I don't think it'll last much longer, so I've been doing some research for a new mp3 player. A year later after the original, the 2nd generation Zune was released this month and is currently outselling Apple's products. It's selling so much that every store has them on backorder. Here's what it's got in it:
-3.2" glass screen (destroying ipod's 2.5" screen)
-80gb harddrive
-smaller and thinner casing (same size as 6th gen iPod)
-efficient new touchpad navigation that supposedly works very well
-Wi-Fi for syncing and sharing
-high definition video playback in 3 formats
-FM radio w/ RDS
-easy-to-use (but required) software
-battery life not quite as good as ipod (approx 30 hrs)
-currently costs $250

Here's the Cnet video review, which gave it higher praise than the 160gb iPod:

Here's a fanmade clip that shows off the new interface:


Hopefully the new Zune won't be overshadowed too long by the miserable failure of the original Zune.
Of course check out more at http://www.Zune.net, Amazon.com, or the Cnet review: http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/zun ... l?tag=also
I'm keeping a close eye on this. The new Zune looks sick. Anyone have one of these yet?

I'm waiting until large capacity media players go solid state before I test the market again.

So basically you're waiting for the next iPhone? That might be a good idea to make sure before you invest your precious dollars into something that will become technologically outdated in no time. If only this Zune came out a year ago...

That may take quite a while for the price of solid state memory to go down enough for this to be feasible. Most people are unaware or don't care enough to spend that much money for a solid state device. Even when it becomes more reasonably priced the average consumer will just look at the size and price.

Didn't Toshiba develop a 32GB flash drive? Buggy made a good point about solid state. Those things won't crap out like a harddrive would.

Dell already ships some laptops with SSD. Also, there are large capacity drives becoming available, even over 500GB. The prices are high right now, but they will drop dramatically over the next year and be reasonable for all consumers and consumer products.
I mean, right now I still have an 80GB 5gen iPod. But a few years from now when I need to get a new one SSD should be the standard. Longer lasting, faster, smaller profile, cooler. Good times.

Yeah, laptops have them but they're mad expensive.


That's still 8 times more expensive than the current price for hard drive per GB. Yeah it will have come down a lot but it will still cost more than a disk hard drive and people tend to be stupid and not really look at all the features of a product. If they see an other product that has more room for storage, is cheaper but has a disk hard drive they'll just get that instead.

I would love to have a SSD for my computer, the hard drive is the slowest part, but it will still take quite some time for the prices to come down to justify that leap. I really want to see this technology developed more and made mainstream as the storage device is really in need of an update. I just think you may be waiting for a while.