digitaltodd » Gadgets

My New Zune – The Experiment and The Review

todd — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:01:35 +0000

Yup that’s right I got a Zune. As part of a research project being conducted by Matchstick.ca and ChatThreads.com I was lucky enough to be nominated to receive an Black 8GB Zune, by my friend at Outspoken Therapy. According to the paperwork that came with my Zune, ChatThreads is a word of mouth research company that is tracking the conversations that people have had about their Zune to see just how word of mouth travels and Matchstick is the marketing agency that has implemented the program. Part of the package is a set of cards with my unique conversation ID on it that I can hand out whenever I have a verbal discussion about the Zune, the idea here is that the people I talked to take the card home and go online and fill in a questionnaire. If I have any other discussions online via IM, social network, email or blog, I just submit the links or copies to ChatThreads. ChatThreads offers some nice incentives for people to participate in the converstions by offering to donate 5$ to charity after you fill in the questionnare or you can have a chance to win 500$ from a draw, before I got my Zune I participated in conversations and I will say that ChatThreads will not spam you after you have given them your email and in fact they will only ever contact you again if you give them permission to by opting to participate further. It’s a very interesting experiment and I hope that I can see some of the results when it is finished.

I have used a number of MP3/PMP players and the only one I ever really liked was the iPod, for form and functionality there was nothing better, and there still isn’t. That being said I really do like the Zune and it has some really great features it’s the desktop software that fails miserably.

What do I like about the Zune?

Battery Life (seems to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-12 hrs of music playback)
Video support (Apparently you can connect it to a TV with a A/V kit)
Wireless sync (I like that you can drop stuff onto it without having to connect it to the computer)
Wireless sharing (It’s kinda cool to be able to wirelessly trade stuff between Zunes)
Built-in FM radio

What I don’t like about the Zune?

The proprietary cable to connect the Zune to the computer. (What?..wait didn’t you say it could sync wirelessly? yes but it charges through USB port on your computer or travel adapter that you plug the cable into) Which means when you travel you have to bring yet another cable along. Yes I am aware that iPods also require a special cable and that is a flaw in the Apple design as well.
The headphone port is on the bottom. I know this isn’t major, more of an ease of use thing.
The Zune software is not good. My major problem is the view of what is on the device. The options for viewing what is already on the device are confusing and do not display all the information I need to make decisions about what I am removing. For example I am a big Alice Cooper fan and I have several Alice Cooper albums on my Zune, but Alice Cooper does not show up as an Artist on the Zune, only the albums titles do. Alternatively I also enjoy The Sisters Of Mercy of which I have 5 albums on my Zune but the only thing that shows in the device list is The Sisters of Mercy artist but not which albums are there. As I said earlier this is the single biggest downfall of the Zune, I know that I will be labeled a “fanboy” but iTunes is leaps and bounds ahead of the Zune software and if Microsoft could fix that they would have an amazing PMP.

Over all the user experience with the Zune is really good. I had some trouble setting up the Zune software initially, I think that it was a result of the Zune being connected while the software was installing. After removing and reinstalling everything went just fine. I had the opportunity to play with the wireless sharing while I was at the cottage with some friends last week and I was really impressed at the speed of the transfers but somewhat disappointed in the 3 days or 3 plays limitation but I understand the reasoning behind it so I am not calling it a fail (and I am not sure if that applies to pictures and podcasts as well or not).

Here is the link for my ChatThreads conversations, if you took the time to read this I would appreciate you letting them know. It will only take 5 minutes and you could win 500$.

HTC S640 Full review

todd — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:22:29 +0000

I have had the Telus HTC S640 for over a week now so I thought it was time that I did up a full review of it. So here we go.

Let me start by saying that I got this phone because it was cheap (with customer loyalty and new term package it only cost me 50 bucks). The main selling feature over some of the other units was the WiFi capability, I really wanted to be able to use the phone off-line in hot-spots especially when I am in the USA so I don’t incur roaming data charges.

My main reason for upgrading at all was the mobile email capability which for me works amazingly well, using the IMAP protocol in Outlook 2007 and on the phone I can sync my Gmail account between the web, my desktop and my phone without issue.

The unit runs Windows Mobile 6 (Smartphone) and comes bundled with Office Mobile (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) and it really is great if you need to edit or approve a document while you are on the go. With Active-Sync the contacts from Outlook on my desktop show up in the phone and any changes I make in either the phone or on the desktop sync flawlessly. The phone call quality is very good and overall I am pleased with how it functions as a phone it does what you would expect. It also supports Bluetooth, and has a microSD expansion slot which will take up to a 4GB card (although I hear people are using 8GB without issue). It also has a 2MP AF camera. It ships with a stereo headset, charger and y-adaptor so you can use the headset and charge or sync at the same time.

As for the negatives about this phone, there are a few. The camera is just terrible, I have yet to take a decent picture of anything. It is very slow and without an enormous amount of light and and incredibly steady hand you get unusable pictures. I didn’t buy this as a replacement for my digital camera but I was hoping to be able to use it to snap picts to email to clients to show them things I have found or just to friends for fun, neither is really possible and I have almost given up using it. The WiFi and Bluetooth, while very useful, are brutal on your battery life, it won’t last the day if either is turned on all the time. Last but not least is sync time, it takes about 20mins to sync 2GB of songs to the microSD card which is really a problem if you decide to change over your music at the last minute.

New Smartphone!

todd — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:36:04 +0000

It was time. The Mike phone I had was on it’s last legs. It didn’t vibrate anymore, it kept asking me to install my SIM card, it wouldn’t hold a charge. I wanted to get off the Mike system anyway becasue it is not as useful to me as it was. I needed mobile e-mail more than anything now. SO I went to my local Telus store to see hat they had on offer and came home with the HTC S640 Smartphone…. I understand now why they say the PDA is dead.
This thing is loaded with features, full QWERTY keyboard, 2MP camera, microSD slot, Bluetooth, WiFi, Media Player. It does e-mail and IM, it has the full Microsoft Office mobile edition for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. I just got it yesterday and setting it up has been fairly easy although I did have to give up my Thunderbird for Microsoft Outlook but I will survive. I only have two small problems with the phone;

The keyboard is very small… it has to be inorder to get a device this small so it is a trade off.
It seems to take a long time to switch apps, not ever having a phone like this before I have nothing to compare it to so maybe I am expecting to much.

I will post a full review and my setup information after I have had it for a few days and have figured it out.