Completely surprised and amazed

I originally wanted an IPod touch, especially after playing with my cousin's. However, my dad has a huge issue with Apple and all the games that they play with their music and devices. He strongly prefers that we do not buy any Apple products, if we receive it for free, that's fine but we are not to pay a dime, and that's completely understandable considering they screwed him over so I was more than willing to abide. However, I was due for a new MP3 player, and I wanted something as similar as possible. My cousin, before she got the IPod touch, she had an older version of the Zune. At first she loved it, but after a few months she began to become very fussy with it. She didn't like the software, she complained about many issues that she had, which made me extremely wary about buying the Zune HD. Nonetheless, I looked up reviews, watched youtube videos and played with some in Best Buy and I automatically fell in love with it, but I was still wary because I can't make a decision based on only having used the item for five minutes. I looked for the best deal, which I found on EBay, and the day it came in I set it up. Finding the software was not difficult, but setting up the player was a tad bit strenuous. I ran into some errors but after repeating the process I got through it. Downloading the music into the Zune program was extremely fast, especially considering I downloaded it from an external harddrive, but downloading it onto the player wasn't as fast, but that's to be expected. Nonetheless, I unplugged my player and I was off. Once you put music on your player, album art and pictures of the artists are downloaded and can be viewed while listening to music which is a great feature in my opinion. The picture, video, and internet quality is absolutely amazing. I was stunned while watching the preview videos that Zune provided. It's better than an HD Plasma screen TV. The music's is easy to play and find, the menu only takes a few minutes to get used to and the touch screen is phenomenal. Also, since I received a new Zune HD, I received a 14 day free trial for the Zune Pass, which is amazing way to get new customers. Simply sign up and you get 14 days of unlimited music for absolutely free, and if you don't like their service (I don't see why anyone would,especially since it is only about $15.00 a month) then you don't have to pay. However, there are a few things to be cautious about. The music, pictures, movies, anything that you put on your Zune, must be put in the Zune program and MUST remain on your harddrive, if the Zune program cannot access the music that was previously on your Zune, it begins to erase it, so be cautious when deleting music from your computer because the next time you sync up, you might lose all your data. All the music also must remain in your collection in the Zune program because, once again, if you delete it, it deletes from your Zune as well. Last but not least, this isn't your average MP3 player where you plug in the USB and it shows up as a harddrive or a storage device and you simply drag and drop. You MUST download their software and sync up your device that way. There's no other way. Other than that I don't have any issues with it. I love it and I'm surprised at how much I like it. I'm glad that I made the decision to get the Zune, I honestly believe that it's better than the IPod touch and wouldn't trade it for the world.Read full review