I normally am eager to recommend products I find very useful. In this case, I feel it necessary to tell you all to avoid a product at all costs. That’s right: the Zune.

For those of you not in the know, the Zune, which launches this week, is Microsoft’s years-long billion-dollar effort to thwart the iPod. Microsoft is launching, as part of the Zune network, a music store very much like iTunes in that the tracks you buy will only work on the Zune (much like tracks you buy on iTunes will only work on an iPod). The Zune, although physically larger than the iPod and a little clunky looking, does have a big screen (although it’s the same resolution as the iPod’s), a nice rubberized plastic shell, and the ability to play several popular video formats in widescreen mode but can only play WMV and MPEG-4 videos and doesn’t actually have a wide screen (it just wants you to think it does by making you turn the player on its side to watch videos). [This correction was made after a comment below prompted me to do some additional fact-checking...this is what I get for basing some of my research on pre-launch media. Thanks -Matthew]

I wanted to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt this time. I really, really did. Even though I love my iPod, I hoped someone would come along and goose Apple into making even better iPods — there’s nothing like healthy competition. But after months of hype and expectation, the Zune launch has blown up into nothing short of an industry tragedy.

Avoid the Zune like the plague. Do not buy one. Ever. Why, you ask? Let’s take a look at where MS went wrong…

• Won’t work with any existing media player software. What, you say? Not even Windows Media Player? Nope. Microsoft couldn’t even leverage their existing software that they’ve been including in Windows since forever and of which they just released a brand new version (oh, and keep that in mind: Windows. No Mac support here). The Zune requires you to install a special Zune-only music player (which, in typical Microsoft fashion, turns out to be a magnificent disaster of a program — check out what Engadget had to go through just to get it installed — I lost track of how many times it crashed their computer. It almost made me cry for them). This special player allows you access to the Zune music store where you can buy the aforementioned songs that only work on the Zune. Well, that’s just like iTunes, you say. True, but — and this is a big but — now Microsoft has TWO media players, each with a music store, each completely incompatible with the other. Confusing for most novices? Absolutely. Idiotic? Without a doubt.
  
  
• The Zune has built-in WiFi. Wait, that’s a negative? Well, it could have been a fantastic plus had they not crippled it. For one thing, forget about connecting to wireless networks — can’t be done. Forget about wirelessly syncing your music library (that would have been so damn cool!) — can’t be done. What can you do with the WiFi? You can share songs with other Zunes in a 30-foot radius. Cool, right? Not really — the songs expire after 3 days or 3 plays, whichever comes first (and playing it for 1 minute counts as a full “play”), and then the song vanishes leaving — conveniently — a link to buy the song from the Zune music store. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if it only applied to songs that were already copyrighted, but here’s the kicker: if you make your own recording, or have any other recording that’s not copyrighted, and want to transfer it to another Zune, the same 3 days/3 plays restriction applies. Incredibly, incredibly stupid.
  
  
• Buying songs on the Zune music store. Oh, this is where my blood really boils. Most of you know how iTunes works — you put in your credit card once, and then you basically click one button to buy a song and its yours. With the Zune music store, you can’t buy songs with actual money — no, no, you have to purchase “points” first, and you must purchase them in minimum blocks of $5. Songs cost 79 points each, but — wait for it — 1 point is not equal to 1 cent. So you can’t use up all $5 of your points on several songs, you’re going to wind up with points left over, but not quite enough to buy a song — essentially giving Microsoft your money for free. So you see where this is going — you then buy another block of points. And the cycle continues. Someone on This Week in Tech calculated this out — to actually use up all the money you give to Microsoft and not have any left over, you have to buy 495 songs. So not only is Microsoft shadily squirreling away your money, but they’re creating a ridiculously complicated process and raising the barrier of entry to do a simple thing — all I want to do is buy a damn song! Just charge my credit card!
  
  
• Unreliable DRM scheme. Although the Zune environment is technologically analogous to the iPod/iTunes environment (1 music store, 1 player platform), Microsoft’s history with DRM (that’s Digital Rights Management, or what restricts you from copying those song files willy-nilly) should make you scared — very scared — about getting locked into such a scheme with them. Anyone remember PlaysForSure? For the last couple years, up until pretty much last week, it was the platform that Microsoft had dumped a ton of money into and convinced partner companies — Samsung, Rio, Creative, pretty much everyone that makes an MP3 player — to support in their players. It was a music store DRM mechanism that would, well, “play for sure” on any device sporting the PlaysForSure logo. When they decided to launch the Zune, Microsoft abandoned the entire PlaysForSure platform — the music store, the partners they got to build players for them, everything. So some people who spent a lot of money on songs at the MSN music store to get PlaysForSure media now have a collection that can’t be added to and that will be lost if they want to move to a new player. Given that kind of track record, you should be wary of anything Microsoft wants to lock you into next, because it might go the way of the Dodo — along with all your money — in a couple years. Even though Apple uses basically the same model, at least they’ve kept it the same for 5+ years now and it’s a time-proven system.
  
  
• Limited choices. As if the above weren’t enough, the Zune music store only offers about two thirds of the music library of the iTunes Music Store, not to mention that iTunes has hundreds of TV shows and movies available also, plus podcasting integration — all a distant dream on the Zune.
  
  

Like I said, I wanted to give Microsoft a shot. I wanted them to succeed. I wanted there to be more than one near-perfect media player to choose from. With the device itself, they had a shot. But by the very day of the Zune’s launch, they’d already managed to hang themselves. The business decisions, the shoddy software, and the nightmare that is the Zune music store are clearly the collective bazooka with which Microsoft has just blown its head off. Tons of reviewers, from tech sites to industry pundits to mainstream media, are already sounding the Zune’s death knell.

How can this be? How can a company with enormous resources at its disposal — both in manpower and, God knows, cash — spend years developing a product with a clear target and then set it up for failure with one bad decision after another? (Not to mention come up with a marketing slogan like “Welcome to the social.” What, an ice cream social? Where?) It just goes to show you that you can’t always buy success. You have to have some passionate people working on your product who care about more than just the bottom line — I’m convinced that’s what makes Apple so successful. Take that as you will, but no matter how you slice it the Zune at best will never come close to catching the iPod and at worst will be yet another monumental flop for Microsoft. One day, that company might figure out what people really care about. Today is not that day.

What would you prefer for $250? A sleek, thin, elegant and easy-to-use player that is paired with a music service that’s been around for years and has been proven again and again, or a bulky albeit larger-screened device that uses super-crappy software, imposes DRM even on your own files, rips you off when you buy music, and relies on a distribution model that may not be around very long? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Buy something else. Pretty much anything else. I think Engadget put it best in their review:

The Zune is a player riddled with a lot of small issues — death by a thousand cuts. Do we think any particular one is a deal breaker? Well, even given our nightmarish software issues, not really. Do we think they should have worked out the kinks and sat out this holiday season? Probably, yeah. Do we think there’s potential for betterment of the platform and especially the player through software updates? Given enough time, absolutely. Would we recommend the product for purchase, like, right now? Not a chance.