I touched a Zune

Of course I had to wash my hand many times over to sanitize it though. But seriously, I did touch a Zune in person at Best Buy. I didn't spend too much time with it but here are my impressions. Having a big screen was a nice feature but it seems like a cheap big screen. The resolution is the same as the smaller iPod screen and you can tell. The overall feel of the device is that it was smaller than it looked in pictures but did not have that "hand in glove" feel of the iPod. It seems unusually thick for it's size. The substitute pad where the click wheel would be felt just like that. "The click wheel fell off and we glued on this four button knob." Very cheesy. At least some of the other MP3 players tried to come up with an alternative to the click wheel. Even Dell's sensitive strip seemed better. I did not get a chance to listen. The thing was glued to the counter. All in all, it did not feel like a real competitor to the iPod. Of course the game is not over and the iPod needs to keep innovating because Microsoft has shown that given enought design monkeys in a room and enough time and money, they can make a competitive product.