At some point over the last few days, without any fanfare, I surpassed my first 1K (1,024) of plays. I have said before that I am completely addicted to the Zune. I listen in the car during my hour-long commute. I listen at work, pretty much all day. I watch podcasts or videos during my lunch break. I have not even listened to a CD since I bought the Zune back in early February.

While I [heart] my Zune, I do have a few thoughts on things I would like to see happen with the device, software, and site. In no particular order:

  1. A fix for the random reboot problem. It does not happen to me nearly as much as other people, but Microsoft’s lack of response is a bit unnerving. The Microsoft knowledge base refers to Zune.net as means for support, and yet none is given for this problem.
  2. Better video organization/navigation. Video on the Zune is great. Organization is not. You have two choices: List all the videos, or list videos by genre.
  3. Caching of lists on the Zune. Ever notice that if you go into a menu that has a large number of items, you can hear/feel the hard drive whirring away while the list of items is created? Since items can only be added during sync, why is the list of items seemingly built on-the-fly? When I select “Pictures”, I want the list of pictures to just show up. I do not want to wait 3 seconds while the hard drive thrashes together a list for me.
  4. Allow me to remove media from my PC without having it removed from the Zune during the next sync. Sync’ing as a guest or using hard drive hacks is not an acceptable solution to this problem.
  5. I would like to see status updates from the Zune Team. The community has been waiting a long time for the next version of the firmware and software. Regular updates from the Team would be great. It does not have to be anything special. Maybe a notice at the top of the page stating the development status or estimated time until realease.
  6. Support for more video file types. I cannot even begin to guess why the Zune software does not allow you to add AVI files. Considering the fact that most digital cameras encode video into an AVI file, this seems like a short-sighted descision on Microsoft’s part. Allowing users to sync FLV files would be a huge bonus as well since YouTube, Google, and Yahoo! all use this format. What if the Zune software and Internet Explorer worked together? IE could give you a right-click context menu option to add a video from a web page directly to your Zune’s video collection, ready to be moved to the Zune on the next sync.
  7. Fix the software. The Zune software is slow. The software uses too much CPU when sitting idle. It has problems burning and ripping CDs. You cannot edit meta tags with it. The list is long and needs to be addressed.
  8. Name the software. I brought this up recently in the Social. Refering to the software as “the software” or “the Zune software” seems to water down the Zune experience. It should have a name that is original, catchy, and, like the Zune, does not start with “i”.
  9. Games. Yeah, I said it. I was originally against this idea when the video from the Game Developers Conference made its rounds on the intertubes. While I will not use my Zune for gaming, I will use my Zune and my programming skillz to create custom applications. I have some ideas in mind, but I will save those for furture posts.
  10. No clock. I know it’s controversial. Clocks lead to Alarms. Alarms lead to Calendars. Calendars lead to Fear. Fear leads to Suffering. All are paths to the iPod side. Need them we do not. Listen to Yoda you should.

What about you? If you could have the Zune Team fix, add, or enhance something, what would it be?