I decided to wait a little while before I posted my thoughts on Microsoft’s announcement of Windows Phone 7 Series.  I wanted to give myself a little time to digest all the coverage.  I also wanted to gather my thoughts on what we know and what is still up in the air.

For those that haven’t seen the new interface yet (where have you been?), here’s a quick video intro:

I’m not going to go very in depth in this post because many other sites have covered what we know with extreme depth and clarity.  If you’re looking for an in depth article with very good analysis, see this Engadget article.  For my part, I’m simply going to cover things from my personal perspective, picking out the things that I really like or things that I think will really apply to my life.

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Microsoft will reportedly be announcing Windows Mobile 7 at Mobile World Congress during a Steve Ballmer press conference on February 15, 2010. There have been rumors swirling for weeks now about what we’re going to learn about Windows Mobile 7 at MWC.

I haven’t talked about Windows Mobile much on the site, mainly because there hasn’t been much news regarding the platform for a while. Sure, Windows Mobile 6.5 and subsequent versions were released, and they were an improvement (somewhat) over previous versions. But they weren’t the big, revolutionary leap forward that we’ve been expecting. Whether Windows Mobile 7 will fulfill that promise from Microsoft, we’ll have to wait and see.

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I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m a bit of a Microsoft fanboy.  I don’t take it to the levels that Apple Fanboys often take their fanboydom, but I do tend to like a lot of things that Microsoft does.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I see a lot of the deficiencies in their systems and software and it annoys me just as much as the next guy.  And I’ll be the first one to admit that Apple has got serious style.  But I like the flexibility of Microsoft’s ecosystem rather than the Steve Jobs dictatorship over at Apple.

My first portable media player (PMP) was an Apple iPod Mini.  I think it was a 4GB Blue model.  It was fine, I guess, but I ran out of space on it and needed to upgrade to get more.  I upgraded to the Apple iPod Video (5th Generation iPod, I think), which was a 30GB model.  It was fine as far as space goes, but I REALLY hated iTunes and the DRMed to all hell music that I supposedly owned when I bought it from the iTunes Music Store.  I was also disappointed in the way iTunes and the iPod handled podcasts.

When Microsoft launched the second generation Zune, I was ready to make a switch.  I bought my 80GB black Zune 2 the day they came out and I’ve never looked back.  There are so many things to love about this device and the software and services associated with it.  Sure, there’s a few annoyances as well, but not too many in my book.

I’m sure I may miss a few, but here are the major reasons I love my Zune:

1. The hardware itself is really nice.  Sure, it’s not as sleek as an iPod.  But the navigation pad (the squircle) is awesome.  You flick your finger in the direction you want to scroll and the items scroll really quickly.  Press the squircle in the direction and it moves one item at a time.  Just really convenient, easy to use navigation mechanisms.  The screen is nice, though a larger, higher resolution screen would be on my wish list.
2. The device software is awesome.  I always hated the navigation on the iPods.  It always felt like I was hitting back, back, back a lot to navigate to a new section.  The Zune software has a crossbar navigation mechanism that allows you to scroll up and down and left and right.  For instance, when you go into Music, you can scroll left and right to get to the different filters (Artist, Album, Genre, Playlist, etc.) and up and down for the results of that filter.  If you, for instance, go to Artist and select an artist, you’re then presented with a left/right scroll list of all of your artists and an up/down scroll list of the albums for the artist you’re on.
3. The Zune PC software is very clean and easy to use.  It’s taken a few versions of the new software, but I think it’s finally there.  There’s some really cool features like Mixview, which allows you to view related artists, other listeners and various other related information about a song you’re playing.  It’s a great way to explore similar or related music and other people with similar tastes to yours to see what they’re listening to.
4. The Zune Pass.  This, to me, is the best part of being a Zune user.  For $14.95 a month, you get unlimited, all you can eat, access to most of the Zune Marketplace’s music content.  Download 5, 10, 15 albums a month, it doesn’t matter.  Sure, you’re “renting” the music and if you stop paying your subscription, your content expires.  But if you typically buy an average of an album a month, the Zune Pass is worth it, especially considering that you get 10 free tracks per month to keep.  Those are completely free, non-expiring tracks.

I’m sure there’s more things that I love about the Zune that I’ll think of after I finish writing this post, such as the fact that you can sync your Zune over wi-fi, can access the Zune Marketplace and stream music over wi-fi, and can stream music to your PC from the Zune Marketplace even on computers that you don’t download your music collection to.

All in all, if you’re looking for a new portable media player, consider the Zune.  It’s a great device!