Wireless: practical issues

[Caliente]

Sure, its great that the Zune has wi-fi, and it will be a great novelty around the house - look kids I'm watching the Simpsons over my network on a 3" screen, but realistically at home, I'm gonna choose my widescreen laptop or 57" television everytime.

So to me it becomes a question of, what can I use wi-fi for on the go? Me thinks not much. The best thing I can think of for wi-fi is that it is going to be a glorified data connection when you go to your mates place.

I would prefer a USB2 data cable which instantly
recognises the Zune as storage in XP/Vista/OSX.

Next: battery life.
Having wi-fi on is going to chew through the Zunes battery life.

So for me it boils down to typical situations where I use an mp3 player and the prevalence and usefullness of wi-fi.

House: yes, but I'd rather watch/listen on my PC instead.
Outdoors: useless
Train/Bus: useless
On the go: useless
In the car: useless
Friends Place: Yes, but I'd rather use a USB cable.
Starbucks/any coffeeshop with wifi: Yes, but why? Are the masses really going to be purchasing music here (maybe, who knows...) but I imagine without a keyboard or even a real scroll wheel, finding and purchasing songs is going to be tedious.

Someone prove me wrong - I'm more than happy to see the Zune succeed and spur competition, but I am convinced at this early stage it will fail.

[daS]

One potentially interesting usage would be to keep your media player in the car (and charging.) But when your car is in the garage or driveway of your home it would sync via Wi-Fi so you wouldn't have to unplug it and bring it (the media player, not the car) in the house to update your library.

Personally, I have an old Panasonic SV-SD80 MP3 player. It's tiny, uses SD cards and came with a water resistant case that is perfect for use while riding my bicycle.

For me, very light, tiny and rugged are the only features I want in a portable music player and I really don't have a use for a portable video player with a tiny screen.

I guess I'm just showing my age. ;)

[Jason Dunn]

Sure, its great that the Zune has wi-fi, and it will be a great novelty around the house - look kids I'm watching the Simpsons over my network on a 3" screen...

Actually, there has been no indication that the WiFi on the Zune will enable it to stream video. All we know about the WiFi functionality is that it can be used for the "wireless DJ" functionality of streaming music to other neaby Zune devices. It's simply too early to make sweeping judgements about what the Zune will or will not offer as it relates to WiFi.

Someone prove me wrong - I'm more than happy to see the Zune succeed and spur competition, but I am convinced at this early stage it will fail.

Considering we know very little about the actual functionality of the Zune beyond the specifications in the FCC manual, that seems a bit premature doesn't it?

[Aaron Roma]

One potentially interesting usage would be to keep your media player in the car (and charging.) But when your car is in the garage or driveway of your home it would sync via Wi-Fi

Holy Crap! I never thought of that before, but that would be an excelent feature. I actually have two iPods. One stays in my car. The other one I actually use as my portable player. The only time my car player leaves the car is to take it in to sync. I could definately see making a use of a feature where when I pulled within range of my WiFi, it syncs automatically.

Hmmm.... here's wishing. :)

[Caliente]

hi Jason, I have a bad habit of making blanket statements, and you're right - we should wait till we hear a bit more about what the Zune can actually do.

Wireless DJ sounds good - but this depends on the other person having a Zune, which is harder than it sounds in an iPod saturated marketplace. Maybe at a Microsoft conference, ehehe, but even then from this Wired News article...

"The source estimated 80 percent of Microsoft employees have a music player -- that translates to 16,000 iPod users among the 25,000 who work at or near Microsoft's corporate campus (http://www.microsoft.com/careers/mslife/locations/corpcampus.mspx). "This irks the management team no end," said the source."

As for my seeing the Simpsons wirelessly over network, I thought Microsoft was trying to innovate here, and video over wifi would be a positive if not essential step forward, given the Zune coming out with one of the biggest screens yet on the market.

[Jason Dunn]

Wireless DJ sounds good - but this depends on the other person having a Zune...

Absolutely - I'm already planning a front-page post on this very issue. The value of a network is directly proportional to the number of nodes in the network. The Zune has a big challenge here.

As for my seeing the Simpsons wirelessly over network, I thought Microsoft was trying to innovate here, and video over wifi would be a positive if not essential step forward

Don't get me wrong, I agree that wireless video streaming would be excellent to have, but I wanted to set expectations about what the Zune would offer. I'd be VERY happy to be wrong on this issue. ;)