First 6 Takes on Zune 80 (Verdict: Better Than iPod Classic?)

The $249 Zune 80 is Microsoft's latest attempt to kick the iPod in the nuts, praying to crack Jobs' titanium-diamond alloy cup through Wi-Fi features and a touch of divine intervention. CNET, Wired, Dean Takahashi, PCWorld and YahooTech struck first with reviews on the new device. Their verdicts? The cup has not yet been breeched, but Microsoft is making very solid improvements on the brand.

Source:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/frankenreview/

First-Gen Zune Getting All The New Features: This is How You Treat Your Customers

The first generation 30GB Zune—which 1.2 million of you already purchased—is getting all the new Zune's features. All. Sure, the new Zune is more of a half step forward than a completely new design. But Microsoft's done something fantastic here by rewarding first gen buyers with cool new stuff that also happens to be free by software upgrade. And talk about spin— Microsoft just took a middling jump in hardware and turned it into a genuinely good move for loyalists (as well as a PR miracle). Are you paying attention Apple?

Contrast this to what Apple did between the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The iPod Touch is running the same OS as the iPhone, but it's artificially gimped. There's no email. There's no weather or stocks. No notes. No adding events to the Calendar. When old hardware can't support new features, that's not anyone's fault. But all this stuff that's right there in the software and costs nothing for Apple to put in, and they leave it out to artificially differentiate the product line.

Read more from the source here:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/zune/

Zune 2 "source" leaks launch date and specs

Heads up, Zune fans -- some new product is heading your way sooner rather than later, and we suspect there's more than a couple of things to get jazzed about. According to reports from a "source" inside Microsoft, a new batch of Zunes (AKA Zune 2, Draco, Scorpio, etc.) are due out on October 16th (just in time for the holidays), in both flash memory- and hard drive-based forms. The new, smaller, flash Zune (the Draco) will be hitting shelves in pink, red, black, or army green colors, will have a 4GB or 8GB capacity, and will feature a "squircle" (the source's term, not ours) for navigation, which won't have a center button but can be pushed, "From any side." The hard drive-based player (the Scorpio) will be available in 80GB, sports the soon-to-be infamous "squircle," and touts a screen which the source claims is "awesome" for video. We can safely say that there is at least one man out there who is going to be very, very excited about this.

Source:
http://www.engadget.com/

New Zune color - Orange?

Jason Reindorp, the Zune’s marketing director, confirms that there will also be another new color of Microsoft’s music player hitting shelves. Looking at images from ZuneScene it’ll be Orange.

Not content with Black, White and Brown (you’ve got to admit this is a bit different), Microsoft have decided to add a tangerine looking version to the line-up.

Microsoft have also stated that their will be a big advertising push for the Zune, with sums not quite up there for a launch. To quote Jason Reindorp, Microsoft’s marketing director for Zune, “We have a second wave of marketing and advertising coming out next month.”

Flash-based Zune Christmas 2007

As we all know, flash memory cant hold as much memory as a hard drive and flash memory is smaller, quicker, more compact, but cannot hold as much memory as a hard drive. There are flash sticks that are really small which can reduce the size of the Zune significantly but their wouldn't be as much storage space. Chris Stephenson, General Manager of Global Marketing, Entertainment Business, Microsoft Corp. hinted at "a truly WiFi-enabled device" at some point in the future, according to Digital Music News.

- engadget

This sounds really interesting. Hopefully you can download media off the Zune wifi, instead of connecting it to your PC. There is no reason why this is taking so long, but this should have been released with the version 1 Zunes... :)