I've been using both programs for a few days now, and here would be my (short term) impressions.
Chrome
Now, I'm a long-time Netscape/Firefox user. Have been since 1996. I've used other browsers here and there (in fact, I've got IE8, Safari 4 beta, and until recently Opera). Its nice, its light and its fast. Nice combination. A lot of the goodness (and the "big deal") about Chrome is under the hood, so I won't bore you with that. In all honesty, most people don't care what's under the hood, anyhow.
Want to know? Google it ;)
The interface is clean, and reminds me of Safari in how minimal it is. I personally do not like bookmark toolbars, and that's the one bit of clutter it has I think. I would get rid of it but that's the only way I can get my "other bookmarks" to show up (imported from Firefox). I could ignore this except that I don't think it handles auto-completing quite as well as Firefox right now. Its possible it needs more "training," and honestly, Firefox has been around longer. I'm sure it'll catch up. Getting rid of it would be perfect.
Worth noting - unlike Firefox I cannot change search engines on the fly. I have to go into Options, change them, then search. Annoying. I much prefer the ability to switch from a drop-down menu like you can from Firefox and Internet Explorer (plus Opera, but I can't quite recall). This is quite a turn off for me.
I'm not entirely thrilled with the aesthetics of it (primarily concerning how it visually handles tabs) but it does look good overall. The customization/theming/skinning is much better than Firefox, I think. No restarting of Chrome necessary, which is nice.
I'm not noticing any incompatible pages thus far, which is good. Everything seems to render right, very quickly, and all in all is problem free thus far. I do think its little pop-ups with vBulletin forums can come up a little too quickly, but oh well. Tabs that update their titles, such as Yahoo's email or Facebook notifications, don't always work. Its likely a glitch or something, but no such trouble with Firefox. If course, Firefox has an odd glitch concerning typing and Facebook's IM client, so hey, nothing is perfect.
I've got it running on a Celeron 2.5ghz, 1g RAM WinXP machine and it works wonderfully. It feels incredibly light and responsive there compared to Firefox and Opera (I don't use IE, so no comparison there). On my C2D 1.8ghz, 4g RAM Win7 64-bit machine at home it runs fantastic, but then Firefox does too. Now, Chrome will start up and faster when I'm still starting the machine (ie, when Windows is loading everything) unlike Firefox, which is a nice thing.
All in all, though, Chrome is fantastic, and I can easily recommend at least trying it out. No, its not 100% to my preferences (and those are just that, preferences), but its very good.
Zune player 4.0
Let me get this out of the way first: this is everything Windows Media Player should be. The only significant, "I want it now!" improvement they could possibly make to the Zune player is that it gets untied from the Zune and could work with any normal MP3 player.
Right now its easily my second favorite media player, with iTunes being first. Its easy to use, the interface is good, and all in all its just a great player. The interface is a bit less daunting than iTunes (yes, I wrote that), but at the same time I feel like iTunes gives you more control over things. But its worlds better than Windows Media Player.
They integrated their MixView feature from before into more the player itself, calling it "Smart DJ." Its a nice feature and anyone who's used Genius knows what it does. What it does do above Genius, however, is recommend music you don't have. MixView did this too, and its really a feature for people with the Zune Pass (Microsoft's music subscription service), or at least want to find new stuff and can get it elsewhere. It only seems to do this if you use the quick-launch Smart DJ, whereas if you do it simply from your collection view then it won't. You can turn off the Zune Pass suggestions, which is nice. I personally think this feature is horrible, insidious, and seductive. If I were to get a music subscription, I would likely go with Zune Pass because of this and the 10 MP3's per month you get to keep. One gripe, however, is that you cannot adjust the SmartDJ playlist lengths like you can Genius. No deciding if you want 25, 50 or 100 songs - you take what it gives you. You can, however, tell it to update periodically (which matters more to people who frequently add music or have the subscription).
This integration of Zune Pass and the Zune player sets it ahead of using a subscription service alongside an iPhone/iPod touch. Rhapsody can't match this. The only way you'll get something this well done is if Apple decides to offer a subscription option themselves.
Like Zune 2.0 there's no real music visualizer, which is fine. What I do like is you can put it on "full screen" mode and it'll have a nice show of photos, the song name, album covers, etc. For some songs it'll pull down great photos - hard to explain but it looks nice/cool. I've taken to setting it full screen and using it as a faux wall paper.
All in all its a great music player, and if you're one of the folks who don't like iTunes its worth trying out. If you're an iTunes fan I don't think it'll win you over, but you might see a feature or two you'll like. If you're more hardcore, this likely won't do it for you either, but then its likely iTunes didn't either.
I'm really wishing I had a Zune right now to try out syncing and such, but I've heard its as quick and easy as you'd hope. The wireless syncing isn't important to me, but its nice. I wish they'd expand the radio to include AM stations as well, but ah well... I really want to try out how it works with a 360, but the 360/Zune integration won't be for a while yet (they're spreading the Zune platform/marketplace to Live).
And again, its everything that Windows Media Player should be. If WMP was like this, I would've kept my Sansa (a great little player).
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