Eight Great Ways to Get the Most from Your Zune

Sharing Media with Friends

Your Zune's WiFi capabilities allow you to wirelessly copy music and photos between units. This isn't exactly a new kind of Napster Reborn, although you do get to define a cute ZuneTag nickname and a buddy list. Beamed media comes with strict digital rights management limitations. For example, you can play copied audio only three times over a three day period—even if you are the personal creator of that audio. In other words, the Zune adds DRM to media that didn't come with DRM to begin with. Here are the ins and outs of WiFi connections—the "how to"s and "what to expect"s. You'll discover how to set up a connection, how to receive media, and what this means to you as a Zune user.

Bringing the Social

If you were to ask me straight out to name the most social gadget available today, I'd immediately say the cell phone. Nothing brings people together more, no matter where they are or what they're doing. Least social? Music players. Those earbuds cut you off from other people, sending you into a separate experience with its own soundtrack.

Consider teenagers. Teens happily spend countless hours chatting with their friends and text messaging each other until they physically damage their thumbs. Attach an iPod to their ears on the other hand and they become dazed automatons, cut off from parental communication and other human interaction—unless they happen to be text messaging while listening to their music.

So why does Microsoft insist that a social music player ...