Eight Great Ways to Get the Most from Your Zune

Using the Zune Player

Congratulations. You've been Zuned. You're holding a great new gadget in your hands right now. So what do you need to know to be able to use it?

What's that control pad shown in Figure 1 and how does it work? How do you reset the thing? What's the hold switch for? And what are some good navigation tricks?

In this section, you're about to learn the basic Zune skills you need to navigate Menus, play media and use the on-board settings to achieve the playback you're looking for. Both essential techniques and some more exotic ones follow below.

Figure 1. The Zune, its buttons, ports, switches and jack.

Meet the Interface

The Zune. It has one screen, one connector port, seven buttons, a headphone jack, and a hold switch. It doesn't sound like a lot at first, but with just these few items, you can completely control your Zune. Here's a quick feature rundown.

Screen

The Zune has a bright, easy-to-see 240 × 320 pixel display that can be used in both portrait and landscape mode.

Connector port

The opening at the bottom of your Zune lets you connect your player to a computer. You can do this in two ways. You can use the sync cable that shipped with your player or you can buy a Zune dock and connect directly to the dock. Connecting either way allows your Zune to recharge and to synchronize the player's contents with your computer.

Headphone jack

Use the headphone jack to connect your ...