Man, I sure screwed up when I upgraded my Zune to version 2, and it is too late to go back. The Zune firmware upgrade really isn't too bad, but the Zune V2 software is totally useless. Well, not totally, because it can sync your media from your PC to your Zune. But, if you want to organize your media collection, well, you will have to find something else. Me, I have a very large music based media collection (over 50GB and growing), and I like to organize my collection, my way. Which is why I can't stand iTunes and its authoritarian style. Yes, it works for the brain dead folks that don't organize their collections, and it looks like Microsoft took a page right out of the Apple handbook (and even made it worse).
So, what's missing? Well, if you had used WMP or Zune to edit your MP3 ID tags, well, that is (almost) gone. About the only thing you can do is change the song name. And you can't even edit most of the ID tags using Vista! Totally useless. Then, there is the "heart" rating system, which is basically a 3 star system. What was wrong with the tried and true 5 star system? Now I have the choices of not rated, hated, or loved. Umm, I need more than 3 choices. And the most missed option, the auto playlist. The auto playlist was paritially bust in Zune 1 and WMP 11, since there was a null date bug (if you wanted to listen to song you hadn't heard in X number of days, and the song had never been played, the query would return the song because the date last played is null), but there was work-a-rounds. But, auto playlist was cut from Zune 2.2 in order to ship (seems like people don't use this option or didn't complain enough to get it up the priority chain).
Don't even get me started on the dumded down UI. I couldn't figure out how to force it to rescan my folders, since, if you add music to your music folders and Zune isn't running, it didn't know it happened, so it isn't smart enough to look for changes. Turns out you have to drag the folder onto the Zune software and it will add it too the library, if it doesn't already exist (that part they got right). Actually I kind of like this feature, now that I know it. It is faster than forcing WMP or Zune v1 to resync. The problem is that it isn't intuitive. But, if the tags are wrong, you are screwed, because never Zune or Vista gives you the ability to fix them (see the early comment).
And then there is the still missing Software Developers Kit (SDK). Microsoft is really missing the boat on this. Get the hobbyists involved in making your product better. Obviously, you can't figure out how to write a good media library, so why not let the hobbyist go to it. Wasn't that part of the beauty of WinAmp, all the customizations? I so wanted to write a LINQ provider for the new Zune v2 software. Now, I just want Microsoft to open the Zune communication API so someone can write a real media library AND be able to sync it to the Zune device. The hardware (and firmware) isn't bad, but the client side software, totally useless. How I wish for the old ARCHOS days, when you could mount a MP3 player as an external harddrive and you were not tied to a proprietary, crappy media library. What was even better, with MusicMatch, you could keep the hard drive's media library database on the drive.
Update - A major part of the problem with the new Zune Software is that is 100% focused on organizing media collections purchased from an online store. If you still buy CDs (like me), or create your own media files (like me), this software isn't designed for you. I can understand where they were coming from when they designed it, but it was definitely written for a different market segment than the one I'm in. I know I'm not in the majority, but I know there are others out there just like me. I had my hopes that this upgrade would help make the Zune better for me, instead it just made it harder to use.