Good review, though I disagree with a few of your points.

I used to be exactly like you concerning podcasts as I'm a huge reader but then I discovered the BBC news and that's a great way to keep abreast of more than our tiny corner of the world. Plus I'm a software developer and there are some great shows out there like Hanselminutes. Oh, and the BBC has some great music shows as podcasts and since we don't have anything like Pandora for Zune it's a nice way to discover more indie and unknown bands.

As far as the software we wildly disagree. I dislike WMP and was more than happy to go to the new software. I hope to never have to use WMP again. Sure the software is rough in some places, namely proper metadata editing and not enough video organization, but it's beautiful, functional and cuts out a lot of cruft that most media management programs have (iTunes in my book is even worse than WMP). My collection is over 12,000 songs.

I wonder if we're using the same software? When I delete a playlist it prompts me if I want to delete the playlist and it's gone, as in gone gone, no more file. It gives you two options, to keep the file or delete, just select the second option. It even deletes the playlists folder is no more are in there.

The Marketplace also has straight MP3 files, no DRM included. Not for everything of course but a lot.

As for album art forget dragging & dropping the art, use something like mp3tag which can grab art plus proper tags. I even created a plugin for it that pulls images directly from the Marketplace (you can also use Amazon or Discogs) so you get 800 x 800 art link on how.

I thought the software was very drag & drop heavy, drag to playlists, drag to sync, drag to play, drag to burn, etc.

To return to the main menu quickly on the Zune just press and hold the back button, then it's a quick back button to get to your now playing.

Anyway, always nice to see some coverage and while we disagree about the software seems we both think it's a pretty decent little player.