Microsoft launched the Zune 2 family last night while I was dreaming about being a New York City police officer (that’s real, btw), to, nearest I can tell, nearly zero fanfare. (That’s what you get when you inform no one about its launch.) As much as I’d love to needlessly hate on the new Zunes, they’re not all bad. Sure, there’s no touch screen and they’re more of a facelift than anything else, they’re not bad little DAPs.
Microsoft brings something to the table that Apple couldn’t (or wouldn’t)—a 16GB flash model. I’m all about flash-based players nowadays—I walked into an Apple store ready to buy the 160GB iPod Classic, but the lag caused by hard drive access time was too much—so the roomier flash drives get, the happier I become.
I’m also keen on Wi-Fi music syncing, partly because it frees up a USB slot, partly because it’s future-tastic. If I had a PC, I’d also be stoked to see that my DVR recordings easily transferred to the Zune.
See? Zune doesn’t completely suck.
Zune [Microsoft]