The Ben'enator » Zune

Busy Month – Busy Is Good

admin — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:21:46 +0000

It has been an absolutely crazy month around here, but I was able to head out west into Kananaskis Country with the family and took a half-day hike around the Sheep River Falls area. This was an exceptionally good time as my boys are old enough to enjoy the outdoors and put in some good hiking without whining. I honestly never thought the day would come. My wife was armed with the Flip Mino UltraHD and I was armed with my Nikon D90 and we all got some interesting shots and footage along the way. I tried taking a nice slow exposure of the Sheep River Falls, but without a neutral density filter, I could only get so slow. The picture below was taken at f/25 with a 1/13 shutter speed. What makes this shot impressive is that it was hand-held – no tripod and the VR lens worked well enough to take a crisp image.

Over in the Social Stuff, I’m taking down Last.FM as they now charge a monthly fee to listen to internet radio. I’m replacing that with my Zune details, as I’ve been a Zune Pass and Zune Social member for a while now – and love it!

The Zune 120GB

admin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:15:23 +0000

I recently picked up a 120GB Zune on a blowout sale for just over $200 making it one of the cheapest/GB players around. I owned an 80GB iPod Classic and a 16GB iPod Touch at this point and was able to sell off my 80GB Classic for 75% of the cost of the new Zune. My experience with the Zune has been a little frustrating in Canada and I will be posting up a bit of a guide in the future.

I can’t blame Microsoft or Zune though as I didn’t check to see if I could actually buy music or sign up for the Zune pass in Canada. It seems that our Canadian CRTC has decided to block the Zune stuff at this moment. It will be available this fall however, but if you’re impatient, make sure you stay tuned for full details. In the meantime, check out the 120GB Zune wonder and the software below.

I really like the software interface and functionality over iTunes. The only downside is that you need Microsoft (think XBOX Live) points in order to buy music. That being said, purchased music is DRM free and that is a huge bonus.

More pics in my Flickr Photostream.