ars technica Reports Zune HD App Launches are Slow

I’m not planning to seriously consider buying a Zune HD until Project Gotham Racer is available (next month from what I’ve read). Until then, I’m following the Zune HD app story with great interest. Here’s one from ars technica that caught my attention…

Zune HD apps are here… complete with pre-roll ads

There are nine free apps currently available for the Zune HD. Seven are games. The other two are a calculator app and a weather app. ars technica reports that the game apps display ads (static or video) during the launch process. And, the app launch process is said to be a long one. The chess game, for example, took 30 seconds to start. The Zune HD weather app takes about 8 seconds to launch. For comparison, I just launched my 1st generation iPod touch’s (the slowest iPod touch) bundled weather app. It took about 3 seconds to launch. The heavier duty Weather Bug app took about 4 seconds.

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