See how I played on the fact that it comes with “preloaded content” but instead I’m sarcastically saying “preloaded issues”. Yeah, I know, powerful stuff (see, even more sarcasm).

You could probably also call these “bugs”, maybe “poor planning” or if you don’t really care then you may downgrade them to “annoyances”.

Preloaded Content

#1 - Preloaded music doesn’t show album art in software.

This software is supposed to be my one home for all music needs and yet it can’t show me the album art of it’s own preloaded music? That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

#2 - Preloaded playlist doesn’t show up under “playlists” in software.

There is a “Zune Gems” playlist that comes preloaded on the Zune but you’d never know it just by looking at the software. Open your Zune software, click on “playlists” and it’ll only show you the ones you’ve imported. What? Where is my Zune Gems list?

#3 - You can’t copy the preloaded content off of the Zune.

Like some of the preloaded videos or music but don’t want to delete them forever? Too bad, either you leave them on the Zune or you delete them, no chance of getting them back. You can copy the pictures and few are pretty cool but most people will want those tracks and videos.

Finding Album Info

#4 - The “Find album information” dialog has this lovely bit of wonderfully worded text:

“Is This Your CD Tracks?”

I can’t even think of a good accent where that sounds like proper English. New York? Southern? Indian? How about we change that to: “Are these your CD tracks” instead of just adding an “S” to the end of “Is This Your CD Track”.

#5 - “Find album information” dialog can’t make up it’s mind

I have only tracks 2, 6, 7 and 13 off of Lady Sovereign’s “Public Warning” CD because I have almost all the other tracks from her previous albums because I was listening to her months ago, way before The Express started using her songs in their stores (whew, my indie cred has been defended). What I don’t have is the album art so I hit “Find Album Info” and it finds it but decides that it’s going to change the track numbers to 1, 2, 3, 4. Why? I just told it that it found the right album so shouldn’t it look at the album’s track numbers and use those instead?

#6 - “Find album information” is all or nothing

This is a continuation of #5. When it shows you the new track names/numbers you should be able to edit the new information. Maybe you liked how you named your tracks and you just wanted album art? Maybe you don’t like how the track uses brackets instead of parenthesis to wrap the “XXX Remix”. It either does everything or nothing.

#7 - Limited Ripped File Name Formats

How do you rip your files? My current format is:

ArtistAlbum1 - Track.mp3

Yet forget about getting that format in the Zune Software. Want to use a dash as your separator? Sure you can change it but then you *only* get a dash so its “01-Track”. What to change the folder structure it creates? Too bad. I think they decided that no one would actually use the Zune software to rip music so they invested almost no time into it.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more as time goes on…