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There is no such thing as a perfect digital player - they ALL have some shortcomings. That being written, I am pleasantly surprised by the Zune 80 gb player. I have owned hard-drive based MP3 players since 2003 when I bought my first one. I was recently using the 5G 60gb iPod and it needed replacing so I start researching players again. After a great deal of research, I bought the Zune but didn't open it right away. I waited a few days. That was a mistake. For a few days, I just used the free Zune software. I have read some reviews that the software is terrible. I initally agreed but after learning it, I realized I reacted in haste. Sometimes it is a bigger challenge to 'unlearn' other product's software. That was my case. Now I like its simplicity. I would recommend some improvements to it though but it is fine in a general sense. The player is quite good. The sound of the music, to me, is better than my iPod. I did a direct comparision listening to the exact same songs with the same headphones on each device and that is how I drew my conclusion. I have read a review that reported a great deal of problems with synching and so forth. I have experienced none of those issues. No doubling of songs. I do see it run back through the list of everything but it isn't resynching everything. To me, it is checking the index of the Zune software's list of files to the index on the Zune looking for differences to know what to synch or ignore. Here is my list of Pros and Cons for the Zune 80.