Zune players in a nutshell

After playing with XNA I quickly learned I would need an actual Zune device (and likely a premium membership) to test and debug games and applications for the Zune.

After a quick search I confirmed that there currently is no Zune emulator. So the next trick is to learn the various models. My local retailers are selling; 4, 8, 16, 80 & 120 gig models and there appeared to be 2 form factors.

More searching and I discovered the following:

There is an older Zune 30 device which doesn't appear to be on the market
Also known as Zune V1
The Zune 4, 8, 16 are all based on the same hardware
Zune V2
The Zune 80 & 120 are based on the same hardware
Zune V3

So - 3 types of Zune so far.

All Zunes have 240x320 res screens
4, 8 & 16 are solid state drives - larger models have hard drives

Zune V1 has a 60Hz refresh rate, V2 & V3 are set to 30Hz (for battery life)
Zune V1 runs at 524Mhz
Zune V2 runs at 399Mhz
Zune V3 runs at 399Mhz

Time to go take one home

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune

Migrating to Visual Studio 2008

I wanted to take a look at the XNA Game Studio 3.0 - and it turns out it requires Visual Studio 2008. Since all of my current code is based on 2005 projects I've been avoiding the upgrade - no it looks like its time to take the plunge.

There is good news, apparently you can run multiple versions of Visual Studio side beside:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms246609.aspx

And more good news - XNA also works with C# 2008 Express. It looks like Microsoft has made things easy this time around.

Visual Studio 2008 Express: http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/#webInstall
XNA Game Studio 3.0: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7D70D6ED-1EDD-4852-9883-9A33C0AD8FEE&displaylang=en

Happy Coding