[quote name='soccerstud652']Well I am not too happy with the fact that my iPod is about 2.5 years old and it is crapping out on me. My brother's iPod did the same thing around the same time. The Zune screen is bigger and definately better quality. I am still debating because apparently a new iPod is in the works. [/quote]
What do you mean by "crapping out on you"? The battery isn't going to last much longer than that in any of these devices (which is why I hate sealed batteries).
The screen is good quality on both-the Zune definitely isn't better, just bigger (same resolution actually too.
Normally I'd be for a larger screen, but for me personally I use my iPod 95% of the time for audio, so the much smaller size and better interface work better for me.
The GOOD news is that ever since I took my iPod to the Apple Store to the "Genious Bar" (and after a 2 hour wait), they were able to do a "hard drive scan" (which I think equates to doing a hard reset while plugging the iPod into the wall) my iPod has been working perfectly, so this just may be a one time problem.
I'm guessing they just did a normal full disk scan. You can do that yourself too-I'd start with a complete restore (so the system software is rewritten), and then in Windows you'd use chkdisk (the command line utility, NOT the inferior graphical version), and on OS X you'd use Disk Utility, and just do a complete, full scan of the disk with the option enabled to check the entire surface of the disk. That'll mark any bad sectors as bad.
I was having some minor issues with my 5.5G iPod, and it turned out it had about 128KB in bad sectors. Doing a complete scan marked them and it's worked flawlessly since.
The tech said that since the HD has movable parts, it may start to break over time. I need to check to see if the Zune has moveable parts as well.
Yup, it sure does. I should note too that you may not be able to do a complete disk scan of a Zune, or many other MP3 players because they aren't recognized as hard drives without installing special drivers. The iPod is the rare MP3 player that Windows/MacOS just sees and treats as a normal drive, which is what allows basic disk tools to work with it. (Just being able to copy files to it doesn't mean it's being treated as a real hard drive at a low level.)
The iPods I've had have all been remarkably resilient. I've accidentally dropped both my old 3G and my new 5.5G too many times to count, and only minor disk corruption as a result.
There are rumors that Apple might introduce a flash based player that will play video as well, (possibly as the new Nano, possibly as an option "regular" iPod) but there's no telling if that's coming this year or next.
At any rate, any disk based device that's being hauled around can suffer from damage-at least with the iPod you can use normal disk tools to fix it. Plus it's the only device with integrated Podcast support. I just don't see how the Zune is competitive, unless it was like half the price or something.
