iPod Failure vs. Zune Failure

xx0xx

xx0xx

Gawd
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Oct 20, 2005
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I have had 2 iPods and the first iPod I had started having hard drive problems after a year.
The second iPod i had started having battery problems.
I have heard plenty of stories that coincide with this notion that iPods aren't built to last much longer than a year. It may be the fate of the hard drive models. I see a few nanos on sale in the Sale/Trade area and they are tempting...

do the solid state / flash iPods have less failure rates?

also, does anybody have any experience with how long and well the battery and hard drive are lasting in Zunes?

I don't hear many failure stories about the Zune, but there are QUITE a few more people that own iPods than Zunes, so that of course could be skewing the facts.

Any thoughts?
 
I don't know how bad the Zunes are. I've had mine for about 6 months with no problems yet. It's also a lot easier to replace something if it does break in the Zune, though (ie, it's actually possible).
 
I have had my first gen 4g Ipod Nano sense the first day they came out and I have not had any real issues with it, I did have a update issue about 2 years ago but it was fixed rather quickly via an itunes patch.

I got my sister a 8gb third gen Ipod Nano for christmas and she loves it, she has not told me of any problems with it.
 
My sister has had a hard drive based iPod for a couple years now, and hasn't had any problems. I bought my wife a flash based Zune for her birthday, and so far it's been working great. However, it's only been just over two months, so that's not a lot of time.

All my friends with Zunes haven't had any problems, but the same goes for my iPod owning friends.
 
I've had two iPods so far for a total of five years of ownership, no problems. I also don't know anyone who has had a problem with their iPod.

I don't know any Zune owners... :p
 
I went through two 60Gb photos in less than three years. This was mostly my fault as I used it when I worked out and jogged. Lesson learned, now I have a touch and all is well.

rbanzai said:
I don't know any Zune owners... :p
Click to expand...

Never even held a Zune. Unless Microsoft has some magical hard drive voodoo, I'd say the zune is just as susceptible to failure as any other HD based device.
 
Hrm. I think it just happens to be my luck with the devices. Thanks for the input though, it is appreciated.

I might steer clear of HD devices from now on (moving parts = just a bad idea). Especially since even though I try to be as careful as possible, I always end up doing something to scratch something up.

The battery on the 5th gen video was prob just a dud. Too bad it died after warranty expired. I tried replacing the battery myself and messed up the connector. I am now iPodless... but considering that nano heavily. Its just hard to use a 4GB player when you have 60GB of music. Maybe I can use it just for my favorites.
 
I like my zune much better then the ipod

Mine has been working fine for about 6 months
 
Only problem I've had with my zune is very rare among zune member. It had this problem with ghosting songs, where I would already have a song on my zune, then everytime I connected it to my computer it would ghost the same song. (out of 4k songs this happened to around 10 songs. But I did get water damage on it and plus I sent it in after having it for 11 months and with this new one I haven't had problems since.
 
I've had my 30 GB Zune(refurb'd) for 6/7 months now and haven't had a single thing go wrong. It's been rock solid and I use it at least 4 hours a day 5 days outta the week.

The only thing some people will say is that they don't like the software that manages it. I personally don't have a problem with it, but the complaints are there. Mostly they are having problems with the software mixing up album art and not letting them edit the song tags.

Other then that, I say the Zune's a great player even though the accessory selection pale's in comparison to the iPod's. They also added podcast capabilities with the last firmware update and the 2nd gen Zune's have a tactile feedback pad similar to the iPod's. The screen is also bigger but the resolution is the same as the iPod's so when you get your eyes up close to it, the pixels are easier to see then the iPod's as well, not that big of a deal to me though. And with the bigger screen the battery life still seems to be pretty impressive, I get about 6-8 hours on a charge with mixed usage between audio and video. I'd ballpark about 4 hours on strictly video, but I have a battery pack for it that extends it another 8 hours on just video.
 
I just actually got a zune, I've had it for about 4 months now, not a single issue, I really enjoy the size of the screen as well as the functionality of it.

The software is pretty good, though I kinda get a little confused when it tags other album art, to songs without album art, but thats something that WMP can fix, I usually do all of my tagging through there, heh, I enjoyed seeing the album art on it, kinda gave you the "I actually bought this album" kinda feel :D
 
I have a 10gb 3G ipod (the ones that supposedly stopped holding a charge after 18 months) for over 4 years now and it still works fine. I have since upgraded to a cowon D2 though. Far better player than both the ipod and the zune.
 
I've had my Zune 30 for about a year now.

I've had only one problem - older firmware would occasionally soft-lock, requiring a reboot. This hasn't happened in over 6 months though. Otherwise? Zero problems whatsoever. I'm not exactly abusive, nor really gentle - my Zune goes everywhere with me, in a softcase. It spends most of it's time on a charger or in the dock though.

By contrast, a friend has had an iPod 30 for a little over 8 months. His reasoning is hate of the Zune software. It crashes constantly, and has taken to responding very very very slowly lately. Takes ten seconds to jump to the next track. Another friend is on their 4th; they have to buy a new one every 11 months or so, because the previous died for one reason or another.

I'll take my Zune, thanks.
 
i thought people only went thru ipods because they always come out with new ones :p

i have a zune 30 that i got in sept (club live ftw). haven't had a single problem with it. though to be honest i don't use it that much. i also have a sony 2gb stick walkman (the ones BEFORE they started using WMP :() which i usually use for working out and my phone plays mp3s and it has a 2gb card in it. i only have a couple cds on my phone though just in case boredom strikes. haven't had a problem with ANY of em. my zune has almost 2000 songs and around 60 vids on it. most of those being scrubs episodes :)
 
I've had the 4th gen ipods and that one had weird hardware problems hd worked and battery worked but for some reason it would turn on by itself. Just my luck 7 days after the 1yr warranty ended it started having those problems. I have a zune and i treat it really badly and still not a single weep. Did I mention the Ipod was only used at home as in walking around the house?
 
my wife and I both have Zune30s that we got from woot a while back. I abso-frickin-lutley love it. Previously, I had an iRiver H10 20GB (my wife had an H10 6GB) and we thought that they were pretty nice. But, for us, the Zune beats the iRiver hands-down.

The thing that always turned me off about the iPod was lack of an FM tuner. Sure, most people might not use it, but we both use the hell out of it -- especially during baseball season when we use it to listen to games at work.

I don't like the new Zune interface. I actually much preferred the interface of the old software. However, the old Zune software had a tendency to crash and burn without reason. I'll take stability over pretty any day. If MS were to publish some kind of API for accessing the Zune, I think you'd find that there'd be many more Zune owners.
 
I think alot more people have ipods so you will tend to find more failures. I don't have one and have had no problems with my refurbished zune
 
Ive had my 40g ipod for a couple years now... I havent experienced any problems with it yet... I basically use it in my car only, with a few occaisonal trips now and then where i use it with the earphones... I know it doesnt like the cold one bit... sucks the juice from the battery here in the north east when i take it to work.. usually about 2-5 mins after i turn it on from leavin it in the car during work, im out of the parking lot, and the battery is dead... bout the only annoying issue ive had, but thats pretty standard for most batteries when they are sittin in the cold for 8 hours...
 
ive been using my 3g ipod since 2003 and it still works fine

however recently i just bought a 30gig video w/dying hard drive, upgraded the battery to a new one and changed the media to a 32gig compact flash card. very happy with it so far
 
I wouldn't be surprised if the failure rates are very similar. The hard drive seems to be the biggest weak point and those are common to both devices.

I've dropped my Ipods numerous times and left them to bake in my glove box, reliability has been great for me. The Ipod Mini in particular is a little tank.
 
The hard drives in the zune and ipod seem to be the same from the ones I have seen. That being said, my Zune hard drive died within 6 months. Sadly, I cannot find the PO for it since I bought it using a random email for that stupid buy.com 10 off gcheckout thing.

I'd stay away from hdd players. Flash storage is getting cheaper and larger by the day. You could always buy an mp3 player with a micro or standard SD slot and assuming it supports SDHC, futureproof yourself pretty well.

Of course flash players die too, my poor beloved Sony( what does Sony make that doesn't break?) noise canceling mp3 player I got off woot only lasted about a year and a half until the tiny ribbon cable to the 3.5mm jack ripped. But that was more a horrible design flaw, putting the jack right into the next track/disc dial so every time you used it it yanked on it just a little more.

Using one of those buy.com Ipod Nano refurbs now. Hopefully it will last longer since most people seem to rave about Apple, though this thread has me a little worried. Itunes it annoying, but I got used to this crappy tie-in garbage with Zune's software.

I kind of wish I would have just stuck with Sandisk or Creative and their easy drag-and-drop to and from the player using any file manager.
 
Had a 4th gen 20GB iPod for 3 years, never had a single problem.

It "died" a few times, but was resurrected by simply recharging via firewire-AC connection. Other than that, it was superb. Sold it here to aspms* a few months back, survived the trip to Latvia unharmed. :)

Presently enjoying my 30GB 5th gen.
 
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