Microsoft announced that they sold a Million Zunes since it s release in November of 2006. While only a small chunk of the market that Apple has dominated with it s IPOD lines, Microsoft has it s foot in the door. Of course Apple estimates that it sold between 22 and 25 Million Ipod s in that same time period, it will be interesting to see how the next year bodes for Microsoft s effort with Zune, and how any further models might pan out.

I ve been using my Zune since Valentine s Day, a present from my wife and I like it. I ve never been a fan of going with the dominant model. I never liked IPOD s so that might be some of the reason why I liked my Zune so much.

I find the Zune Store to be pretty easy to use, and I don t mind the $15 a month charge to have as much music as I would like. Some of the titles I would like aren t on the Zune service yet, but many of them are. I consider it equivalent to buying a CD every month, except I have my choice of tens of thousands of CD s.

I like having the FM tuner included, because sometimes I just want to listen to NPR or hear about the traffic, or not make a decision between Miles Davis or Rage Against The Machine.

The battery life is a little bit of a problem. It only lasts about 7-8 hours or so, while my old Toshiba Fd-40 seemed to last forever 15-20. I bought a car charger and a wall charger for around $15 which helped, but obviously wouldn t do much on a trip.

I found the wireless talking to other Zune s to be more of a marketing gambit than something that worked in actual practice, considering there aren t many Zune s out there, it s hard to be social if no one out there speaks the Zune s language.

The sound out of the Zune was good, but I m no audiophile. It was load enough and responsive enough especially when paired to a high-end headphones set.

All in all however, I found the Zune to be a good alternative to IPOD s market dominance, the capacity was good, sound good, battery life fair, and overall fun factor pretty good. I would recommend a Zune to anyone, now if they only would get all the cool gadgets that my Ipod friends have.