Set up and sync your Zune player to your PC. Walkthrough of the steps under Zune Software 2. Screenshots and commentary by Zunerama.

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Full Zune 2 coverage from Zunerama:
   Zune 80 review
   Zune 8 review
   Tour the new Zune user interface
   Watch how wireless sync works
Fun stuff:
   Unboxing Zune 80
   Unboxing Zune 8
   Zune gallery - close-ups and 360^o views
More stuff:
   Zune software install
   Walk through Zune's PC software
   View Marketplace screenshots

Set up and Sync your Zune Player: Zune Software Version 2.1

Once you've installed Zune software on your PC, connect your Zune player to your PC with its sync cable. The following screen shots and photos walk through the initial sync of your player.

Click on any of the screen grabs to see a full-size version of the screen-grab.

You need to sync your player in order to use it. Prior to sync, you'll see the following message when you try to get past the player's main menu:

The exception is the Settings menu, where you can see the current firmware version on our player.

For November 2007 shipments, that's Version 2.0 (799), Bootloader 799.

When you first plug in your Zune, you may see the "Found New Hardware" wizard. Let the Wizard do its job and your Zune will be recognized.

If your player is new-out-of-the-box, it'll likely need a firmware upgrade. This will happen automatically:

Now you can give your Zune a device name if it doesn't have one already.

You can also now link your Zune to your Zune tag. If you do this, your Zune tag will be displayed instead of your device name to nearby Zuners within wireless range. Doing so also links your listening details on that player to your custom Zune card in the Zune Social community site.

Sync options are simplified, and enhanced in this version of Zune software. You can decide to "sync all" or "let me choose", and set that separately for each of the categories of music, videos, pictures, and podcasts.

At this point, your player will start to sync with your PC collection. The progress of the synchronizing is displayed dynamically. You can click on the "Just Added" arrow to see a list of items added to your player.

The sync can take a while, especially for video. Some of my video was re-transcoded for sync to my Zune 80 - no doubt because the Zune 80 can store higher resolution video (640x480) for TV-out purposes.

In my sync, some items were initally skipped - as shown below. It turned out, I needed to sign in to Zune Marketplace, to refresh my Zune Pass rights for the content. Once I did that, the skipped items synced automatically.

In a welcome enhancement, the Device Status window shows the amount of space taken up by various types of content - music, videos, pictures, podcasts, and in-box items sent from other Zune players.

With its enhanced sync options, more intuitive navigation and configuration choices, the 2nd-generation sync experience for Zune is markedly improved over the first generation - which actually wasn't bad, either.

The improvements really start to show up in the next part of our review, as we walk through the Zune 2 PC software.

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