I had to drive to New York this weekend to get our taxes done. Nadia’s car (Mimi) has been suffering from audio issues for a while now; the people that installed her system royally screwed it up, then went out of business before she realized that the speakers were busted. As a result of their excellent work, both right speakers sound like there isn’t enough power in the car to keep them going; they suddenly crackle and pop, then fade to the point of being inaudible. Sometimes, without warning, all four speakers will loudly die.

Last Christmas, Nadia got me a Zune FM tuner cradle by Belkin. I used to trust this company to build decent products, but this product broke that trust. This unit functions as a powered cradle only; to Belkin, “FM tuner” must mean “static noise maker” since that’s the only thing it does.

I was faced with a dilemma. I couldn’t trust Mimi’s speakers to last the trip. I was tired of hearing the same CDs that I’ve been listening to for the past three months. Listening to music from my Zune was not an option due to the non-existent FM tuning. What was I to do?

Then it hit me. I looked at a previous gift that Nadia gave to me. It solved my problem, but is the definition of ghetto:

Listen Microsoft, I want to give you money for your products so that I may enjoy them, and then turn around and tell others, “hey, you might want to check this out, it’s pretty cool.” Then you get more money, which you can then use to improve those products and/or build newer and better ones. I will then buy those new and better ones - makes sense, right?

I’ve got to say, you are making it really hard for me to do that.

My new Zune is almost useless when compared to my Creative Vision:M. For the past week I’ve been carrying both devices, trying to figure out which of the two are better. While I prefer the Zune’s “Twist” interface, larger screen, and overall styling, the lack of podcast support is almost a deal breaker for me. By “podcast support,” I mean that I need a way for the Zune software to download, sync, and manage my subscriptions. I don’t want to use some third party solution, as they universally suck, with the exception of iTunes (hey, that gives me an idea… maybe I can find a way to use iTunes and the Zune together… I’ll report what I find).

My three-month-old 8525 frequently locks up on me, or refuses to turn on after going to sleep. That pretty much makes it worthless as a phone, since the thing needs to be running in order to receive calls and emails and the like. I have owned multiple Windows Mobile devices over the years, and all suffered from poor performance and slow reaction times (when I hit “Answer” to pick up a phone call, it would be nice if it actually worked).

My nineteen-month-old Xbox 360 took a dump on me for the second time. Gone are the days that a console would actually make it through an entire generation w/o need of repair (like the SNES and Genesis). Wouldn’t you know it, I am two months out of warranty. I paid MS $105 (after discount) to send me a coffin and get this console fixed. I think they are giving me a free month or year of LIVE Gold.

Luckily, my one-month-old Vista PC is still working just fine. I’m sure that won’t last long.

I’m not ready to proclaim that MS sucks or anything like that, but I think my diehard loyalty to this company is the only reason why. I just need to vent my frustration a little bit. Thanks for listening.

Oh, and Creative, you are not off the hook. Your Zencast software and Zen player are sucking pretty hard right now, but I’ll leave that for another post.