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Fucking Microsoft
Listen, if ANYBODY is considering buying a Zune for someone this holiday season...think again.
In mid November, I got an "update" from Microsoft for my Zune, which was not an entirely new thing to have happen. I took the update and my music library has never recovered.
The problems (and there are several) culminated in the hijacking of my music library. I could no longer tell it what I was listening to, and all of a sudden Microsoft determined what my music was for me, since I apparently need to have dumbed-down software like every other 14 year old with a 30 gig out there.
You can no longer search by genre, and the album artist/song title/album title fields are all fucked up...and I mean BIG TIME...I've got Manowar singing Paradise by the Dashboard Light from the Word of Mouth CD with cover art looking strangely similar to Master of Puppets...
And that's but ONE example. Not a problem, until you realize that it automatically defaults back to whatever it determines the proper setting is once you click on edit. Or it just randomly re-arranges several other tracks/albums/artists with the same information.
I have made about 5 calls to customer support, and they're worth fuck all. Each call has had to escalated to what they call "Tier 2" support, which is I guess a supervisor. Down side? You'll end up being on hold for anywhere between 10 minutes to AN HOUR (I'm not kidding) before being told that "Microsoft is aware of the problem, please go to our website for solutions."
Fair enough. The problem with that? It's an EXTREMELY involved process to re-establish control of your music library (I worked on it the first time for about 20 minutes and still wasn't sure I had it right). Eventually, I followed ALL of the steps and come to find out, that fix only works about 75% of the time.
If you're in the 25% of the people who can't fix their media library, Microsoft's official position is "We're very sorry for the difficulty, but we're not authorized to offer refunds or repair units that technically still work."
I pulled out my original install disc, turned off the internet and reinstalled the original software and wiped my Zune unit, thinking that I could retrograde to the base install. Unfortunately, since the new software has latched on to my Zune unit, my Zune won't communicate at all with the old software.
On top of that, you can no longer use Zune Marketplace and Microsoft (if they find out you've done that) will no longer cover your unit's warranty.
I'm so pissed right now. On the plus side, my wife has something like 13 CDs in comparison to my 4,000,000...so I think she's getting a new Zune really quick...hopefully she won't experience the same issues, but it seems to be a problem affecting any sort of compilation CD/tracks that are ripped to your hard drive during the original upgrade...and she doesn't have anything like that.
Best advice?
MOTHER FUCK Zune and get your gift receivers an Ipod...
In mid November, I got an "update" from Microsoft for my Zune, which was not an entirely new thing to have happen. I took the update and my music library has never recovered.
The problems (and there are several) culminated in the hijacking of my music library. I could no longer tell it what I was listening to, and all of a sudden Microsoft determined what my music was for me, since I apparently need to have dumbed-down software like every other 14 year old with a 30 gig out there.
You can no longer search by genre, and the album artist/song title/album title fields are all fucked up...and I mean BIG TIME...I've got Manowar singing Paradise by the Dashboard Light from the Word of Mouth CD with cover art looking strangely similar to Master of Puppets...
And that's but ONE example. Not a problem, until you realize that it automatically defaults back to whatever it determines the proper setting is once you click on edit. Or it just randomly re-arranges several other tracks/albums/artists with the same information.
I have made about 5 calls to customer support, and they're worth fuck all. Each call has had to escalated to what they call "Tier 2" support, which is I guess a supervisor. Down side? You'll end up being on hold for anywhere between 10 minutes to AN HOUR (I'm not kidding) before being told that "Microsoft is aware of the problem, please go to our website for solutions."
Fair enough. The problem with that? It's an EXTREMELY involved process to re-establish control of your music library (I worked on it the first time for about 20 minutes and still wasn't sure I had it right). Eventually, I followed ALL of the steps and come to find out, that fix only works about 75% of the time.
If you're in the 25% of the people who can't fix their media library, Microsoft's official position is "We're very sorry for the difficulty, but we're not authorized to offer refunds or repair units that technically still work."
I pulled out my original install disc, turned off the internet and reinstalled the original software and wiped my Zune unit, thinking that I could retrograde to the base install. Unfortunately, since the new software has latched on to my Zune unit, my Zune won't communicate at all with the old software.
On top of that, you can no longer use Zune Marketplace and Microsoft (if they find out you've done that) will no longer cover your unit's warranty.
I'm so pissed right now. On the plus side, my wife has something like 13 CDs in comparison to my 4,000,000...so I think she's getting a new Zune really quick...hopefully she won't experience the same issues, but it seems to be a problem affecting any sort of compilation CD/tracks that are ripped to your hard drive during the original upgrade...and she doesn't have anything like that.
Best advice?
MOTHER FUCK Zune and get your gift receivers an Ipod...
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