I guess no one even cares enough to flame...at least you don't give it a thumbs up. But make no mistake they don't care if you like it or if you'll buy it (that makes no sense what do they care about one sale) they just wanted you to write about it. Even a negative review has people thinking about the Zune now.

I'm disappointed in the bloggers who went (and probably a little jealous) and their mostly positive reviews. How can you give it a good review if you were barely able to touch it and they didn't care about you enough or trust you enough to let you have one. I guess the punk rock thing to do would have been to go on the junket and then not write anything.

actually the zune seems pretty nice. and almost all pre-release get-togethers never let you hold the device for more then 5 minutes. check out dapreview.com for more info

I, for one, really enjoy the idea of indie artists being able to "loan" us several of their songs (or an entire album) for three days to let us determine if we want to buy it or not.

That's the most innovative thing Zune or any MP3 player has to offer. Really creative idea!

You can discuss this topic at www.ZuneBoards.com

I love Microsoft and all of their products. I think Digital Rights Management is really cool because it will keep people from stealing music and help artists. Zune is way cooler than the iPod. Please be sure to post these comments on blogs where you see articles about Zune.

I can't understand how your're selling out to Microsoft by offering an honest opinion. If you blew them and it sucked maybe but the Zune has an impressive list of features and deserves to be recognized for what it may offer some users. I don't guess we'll all be sitting around sharing music with our Zune but you know that many will take advantage of the opportunity. The beauty of music is that crosses all boundaries, even DRM.

I think your sheepishness about taking the free plane tix + all the caveats really does help defer any accusations of sellout-ness.

However, being involved w/ those Mobius Band/Baby Dayliner folks! You're doing it all for their corporate dollar, I can totally tell...

Bastards.

did you fly business class?

you should have asked them when the zune player would be available for linux

Who's going to pick up the Gonzo flag? Fear and Loathing in Redmond anyone?

i think their choice of css is one purely based on trendiness and not on the success of the band. they're going for the cool kid market. everybody wants to be cool kid. and if every cool kid has a zune because css is attached to the marketing then everybody will want a zune. or something like that.

but yeah... microsofts' marketing department has definitely pegged certain artists for certain markets. smart. they know it's an uphill battle so they're not going to pick someone obvious like u2 or madonna...

No business class for me. I flew a very cramped economy class (I'm really tall so it's particularly spine wrenching for me) for which I had to get up at 4:30AM EST to catch. I got to Seattle about noon PST and got shuffled over to the Zune building for meetings without any time to really eat or anything. They kept us there the rest of the day giving us soda and a couple cookies but no real food. Then they brought us to a party at a rented out bar and gaves us drinks and a couple tasty but small appetizers. By midnight I pretty much crashed after almost 24 straight hours up with no real meals and went back to the hotel to sleep until 8am when I had to go catch my flight back to NYC. So, while the trip was fun, it certainly wasn't a fancy, extravagant vacation or anything. It was kind of exhausting and I had to use two of my vacation days up to make it out there.

I really wanted to do the gonzo thing and just see how much trouble I could get into in Seattle, but ultimately the early morning and long flight just sapped my energy for that sort of thing :(

I did ask about zune software for linux and they just said that they only had plans for XP and Vista. I'll be curious to see how quickly the Zune gets reverse engineered. A Zune hacked to run linux and let you actually use the wireless for other purposes could be a very tempting gadget.

hello? fly me to the zune?

The only part about this post worth flaming is the fact that you felt the need to excuse yourself through the better part of the post. I'm sure your readers aren't so dumb they need to be explicitly told all of the reasons you might have had for goign on a free trip.

i'm actually not that surprised at MS indie cred considering that paul allen founded the experience music project and donated money to kexp, which is still one of my favorite stations. maybe there's a relationship.

I don't understand the hatred of U2? You mean the band that does the most political work for ending third world debt and helping out with the AIDS crisis in Africa? You can hate their music, their personalities, whatever, but they really do put their money where their mouth is. So someone at MS likes CSS! Um, that doesn't mean AT ALL that they will help artists. Subscription services pay jack crap to artists. I should know...we don't make anything off them compared to the itunes model.

Thanks for expressing a disgust for the ipod and U2 union. When watching a comparison of the Zune and ipod on Fox news (yea I know) the ipod had to have a picture of Bono on it while someone was comparing the two. Something very disturbing about the whole image.