>I found this post interesting so I read up a bit on the Zune.
>Can you guys tell me if these issues still exist or if they’ve
>been handled by firmware updates?
>
>-No EQ settings on the player.
> Not TOO big of a deal, but still kinda sucks
True. To my ears, the fidelity and sound quality is better than my ipod was though. I never used the EQ on that though. The only player i've used EQ on is my little Sony.

>-No gapless playback
> Wow, that's pretty big.
I haven't confirmed this. How can I test it? I don't have any mixtapes.

>-No foreign language support (songs with Asian characters show
>up as squares).
> This would suck. I have a bunch of Japanese music with
>kanji (or is it katakana...?) characters

Funny you mention that. I had an import of Groove Theroy that I guess was japanese. The characters showed up on the Zune desktop software, but I think they did come up as squares on the actual Zune. I ended up retagging it so I dont remember now...i dont read japanese and all.

>-Only 22 hours of audio playback compared to the iPod
>classic’s 45 (according to CNET’s review).
> Not TOO big of a deal, but more battery life is always
>better.

With wifi off battery life increases. I'll have to look for the actual time though.

>-No Autoplaylists with the Zune software.
> Oh, that would suck. I use those a lot.

True.

>-No rating of songs with the Zune software.
> This would also suck, but without auto playlists, I guess
>it's pretty useless.
>

My understanding is that they removed the ratings with the update. Now you can assign it a Heart or Broken heart. Somehow thats supposed to be better than a star rating system that it used to have. Haven't played around with it much yet though. I do believe you can sort by heart or broken heart though.