How can I purchase a halo 3 zune living in Canada?

[blech]

besides E-bay, Gamestop/EB Games seems to be the only other place, and they won't ship it internationally for some reason.

[t-dizzle]

why would u want something like that its a waste of money u could get the regular zune for 3o$ cheaper the halo 3 zune does have a cool design but not worth 3o more dollars

[Joel D]

International sales of Zune is slated for later this year, but buying over the internet hasn't stopped those who want to get a Zune. I hear a lot of Brtish and Canadians have already gotten their hands on Zune. As far as retail stores outside of the US, Zune won't get their until just before Christmas (maybe November)

Hope that helps....

[clarix]

Hold off on any 1st generation zune. Wait for the new one to come out. I guarentee you it will be MUCH better than the halo 3 zune! here's why:

Since pretty much everybody knows about the ipod, I will focus on my TOTALLY ORIGINAL review of the zune. For the record, I have owned an ipod, 2 zunes, and a psp. Also, I do not own a mac and I dont associate with apple geeks, likewise with microsoft geeks.

Here it is: The Zune...

An Underdeveloped product with tons of potential when it is fixed!

I think we were all surprised when Microsoft announced a new mp3 player, dubbed by many to be a new "Ipod Killer". I mean, it looked so cool when the new pictures came out, the fresh advertising campaign, "Welcome to the Social". How could you not like something like this? And when you see it in person and play with it a little bit, it was actually really fun to use! You could stick your own picture in the background, listen to the fm radio, and do quite a few other really cool things that the ipod cannot do.

For the sake of this argument, though im not an apple fanboy, i'll compare the zune to an apple ipod. As you all are aware, the ipod stakes the biggest share of the mp3 market and is therefore the zune's biggest competitor.

Here were my first really good impressions


-Packaging: When I first got my zune, I was quite impressed with the packaging. Everything was in its right place. Unlike the ipod, where you have to download Itunes from the internet, those without an internet connection will do fine. This is because a software cd is included, which will get get you up and running in no time at all. Also, unlike an ipod, when you first power up the zune, you will notice that you have pre-loaded content. This includes movies, photos, and music. Not bad stuff either!

-Big, bright screen: This was perhaps the most noticebale feature. Many people were dissatisfied with their ipod video's small screen, so this appeared to be a clincher for many people. Full Screen album art is available, which makes the listening experience more pleasant. You could tilt the player's screen horizontally to make the most out of your videos and photos. A zoom feature for photos is also available. Battery life is slightly longer on a zune than an ipod, with a claimed four hours.

-FM Radio: Cnet.com, a well-known technophile review site, once conducted a poll with ipod users on which extra feature they wished had built-in to the ipod. Guess what topped the list? The designers of the zune one-upped the design with the radio by imoplementing RDS, which allows the artist and song title of the music played on the radio to be displayed. This means that you wont have to keep guessing the name of a good song that is playing. The headphone jack acts as reciever, so a good pair of headphones will come in handy. Even with the bundled headphones, I had no problems with radio reception.

-Wireless Sharing: This feature really came out of nowhere and no one expected an mp3 player to wirelessly share songs with another person's zune. I've tried out this feature on two zune's and this feature works just fine. However, these two zunes were both in the store and not my own. This feature truly made the zune fulfill the "welcome to the social" motto

-Overall Design: As a relative newcomer to the media player scene, i'll admit that the zune didn't have that eye-catching clean design that made the ipod so appealing. But that wasn't a big priority to me, as I immediatly noticed that the zune is clothed in rubberized plastic. This proves to be effective because the zune is practically immune to scratches and scuffs, unlike the ipod video, which we all know to be a scratch-magnet. This will save you money on buying a protective case for sure. While a clickwheel is noticeably absent, a circular thumb pad is a nice alternative because it allows you to breeze through song lists without moving your thumb too much. The first letters of each title pop up as you scroll down, which makes this point very effective. You can also see tiny thumbnails of album art when you select an artist. The thumb pad also functions as a volume control/rewind/fast forward/previous song/next song. In addition to the thumb pad, a back button and play/pause button complements the the interface well. Microsoft managed to design the zune to make it fun, fuctional, and very easy to use.

-Zune Marketplace: A proprietary music store that has a very nice selection of music, though no videos at this time. How could microsoft one-up the domineering Itunes? The clincher here is the Zune pass for $14.99. This means that, for that price per month, you can download an unlimited amount of music to your Zune. Of course, if you stop paying, all of your music that you downloaded from the service is erased.


Accessories: Even at its launch, the zune had plenty of accessories, even for a more advanced user. Such accessories include a travel kit, home kit, sound dock, and carrying case. Finding these accessories should not be too much of a problem.


Yes, I was really excited when I got my Zune. I thought, "This has got to be better than an ipod!". Boy, was I wrong! In fact, I even gave this cool little device a second chance by exchanging it for a new one, yet I ran into the same problems.

My Problems:

-Screen: If you look closely, the photos, video, and album art are noticeably fuzzy. Both the zune and the ipod have the very same resolution, 320 by 240 pixel resolution. However, with the zune's larger screen, this will cause the screen to be dull. Think of it this way, the pixels in the zune have more of a screen to work with.

-Size: The Zune is noticeably bigger than many of its counterparts. It is even larger than the 80 gb ipod! However, the media likes to blow up the zune in pictures much bigger than it really is. The zune in one's hand really isn't so bulky at all and feels comfortable. It isn't the greatest pocketable device, but most should be happy. All of those who enjoy exercising with their zune should be aware that, since the zune is hard-drive based and contains internal moving parts, rough use may cause the zune to break easily.

-Battery: For many advanced users, the fact that the zune does not have a removale, replacebale battery may deter them. This is forgivable, as few mp3 players have this handy feature. However, the Zune sets itself apart in a negative way from its competitors through its unreliable battery. As you know, the battery is stated at 14 hours, an unrealistic estimate under normal playing conditions. With a volume level at 8, dimmest brightness setting, auto dim, no wallpaper, and viewing no pictures or video, I managed to get between 6-8 hours. For a hard drive player, this is pretty bad. On a side note, do not depend on the battery meter for accurate charging levels, as the meter fluctuates frequently.

-Music: Okay, this is what you are REALLY paying for. Isn't this what you are looking for in an mp3 player? I sure am. I have done a side-by-side comparasin with both the zune and the ipod and the sound quality is the same, nothing different. I do not believe the claim that "4 out of 6 listeners perfer the zune's audio qulaity versus the ipod". In short, both sound fine, although microsoft didn't one-up apple on this critical point. However, if you have the golden ears of an audiophile (which few of us do), you may be disappointed. Unlike most modern mp3 players, gapless playback is missing from the zune.

-Wireless: A fairly common complaint. If you read the advertisement's fine print for wireless sharing, you will notice that you can only play a recieved song 3 times within 3 days, whichever comes first. Even if you stop a recieved song in the middle of play, that still counts as one play. Even your homemade tracks fall under this rule! This rule only applies to music. Videos cannot be shared, although pictures are the recipient's to keep. Do not expect to ever use this feature, as i've never found another zune to share with. Microsoft over-estimates itself by thinking that the zune will be so popular that everyone will use it, thus the wireless feature.

-Software: This is, personally, my biggest gripe. The first impression I had with the Zune's software was that it was basically a proprietary copy of microsoft's OWN media player application! However, the software is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Sure, the zune software is easy to use like its counterpart. But one might wonder why microsoft is making the user waste their time with more unecessary software when they have their own windows-branded media player application. As you know, you MUST use the zune software in order to put your content onto the zune. No drag-and-drop here. The problem here is the bugs it has. Even though I have all of my software updated, the software still managed to crash my computer every single time. This isn't the only problem, though. Its not uncommon to hear users complain that their music gets erased during syncing for no apparent reason. I also am having issues with album art, as the zune cannot retrieve album art as well as itunes. This might not be a problem for a few people, but beware that you will most likely have to paste album art, which can be time-consuming

-Zune Marketplace: The selection is great, by the way. I would advise on holding off on buying anything from the marketplace, as the music has DRM and will therefore ONLY play on the Zune. But the real problem here is thecurrency used to pay for these songs: Microsoft Points. One song costs 79 points, which is equivalent to about 99 cents, the same as most online muisc stores. This can be problematic, as one can mistake the points for cents. Also, the blocks of of points purchased will round off with a remainder, which means that you wont be using up all of your points. This in turn translates to more money for microsoft

-Compatibility: Perhaps the device's achille's heel is its compatibility. The ipod became popular because it was compatible with BOTH a mac and a pc. The zune is only compatible with a pc. Interestingly, since msn is part of the microsoft network, users will be unable to transfer purchased songs from such msn-backed digital music stores as yahoo, napster, and rhapsody. If you wanted to transfer your music from the device's hard-drive onto another computer, you cannot do that, as the zune cannot be used as an external hard drive. The zune also has lukewarm support for music, video, and photo formats

-Hidden Costs: Like the ipod, microsoft decided to cut costs by not including a sorely-needed a/c adaptor in the package. With terrible battery life, you MUST have an ac adaptor, so add another $30 or so to the total cost. Since the zune, like the ipod has mediocore sound quality at best, expect to add more money for decent earbuds. However, unlike the ipod, the Zune has an unecessary tax. Yes, if you read up on the zune a bit, you will notice that the universal music label gets a cut of each zune sold. Universal believes that users will ineviatbly take away their profits by stealing music. Some of us like obeying the law and download our music legally, but that doesn't matter because we are all still charged the same tax. Hmmm...makes you want to go out and steal music, doesn't it?

-Price: As of now, its not uncommon to see prices on the zune be slashed from 20% or more. Some stores even give away accessories for free just for buying the zune. At first, this sounds great to the consumer, but there is a deeper meaning. It can't be a good sign when nearly all retailers slash prices on the zune, even when the device is a little over 6 months old. This can only show that microsoft is desperate to get rid of their zune, perhaps maybe because they are working on a better product.Its possible that when a new zune comes out, you will be saddled with a sub-standard generation.

My Overall Impressions: This device was obviously created as a direct competitor to the Ipod. I mean, microsoft and apple are rivals. Its pretty hard not to notice this fact when both have proprietary digital music stores. However, its blatantly clear that apple has the lead, as the ipod has been around since 2001 and the Itunes store since 2003. Thats alot of sales in that time! I dont think that there are any mind-blowing features on the zune that would make ipod users switch, especially since most of the music purchased on itunes is proprietary, in addition to the ipod being the #1 legal download site for music.


The Bottom Line: I love the Zune. I really do. I was even shocked by my first zune to take it back and start fresh with a new one. Thats how much I really tried to like the zune. But I notice that my forced efforts towards liking the zune are blatantly obvious. Liking any product shouldn't have to take much effort at all. Thats the secret to a consumer liking a quality product.

It's pretty clear by now that microsoft is working on a better zune, as sales haven't been stellar, though not terrible either. Even with the first generation zune, its clear that this product has enormous potential if improved in the future. Improving on the wireless can only do good. Like many dissatisfied users, I really felt that this product was "half-baked", that is, this seemed more like a prototype than a full-fledged "ipod killer".

My personal advice to each user is to avoid the zune...for now. I'm not saying that
you should get an ipod, im only giving you the straight facts on the zune's ultimate
competition. It's not uncommon to hear a TON of ipod complaints. Then again, just keepin mind that, with anything popular, especially a really hot product, there will bepeople having problems. A few really great alternatives include the ipod, creative
zen vision m/v plus, and the sandisk sansa. Technophiles might like to check out
mediaplayers manufactured by archos and cowon.