Microsoft has recently announced its new offer for the customers. It is the “Zune Diagnostic Tool” that collects all relevant data which is helpful in deciphering the ‘USB and wireless sync connection problems with the portable media player’.

The information made available at  ‘Microsoft’s center’, mentions that for this new “Zune Diagnostic Tool” the user would require either Windows Vista or Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher. The software is 250 Kbytes in size and is available in English, French, and Spanish versions.

To make the “Zune diagnostic Tool” applicable and functional the user and the owner would first open the device’s software on the PC, run the ZuneDevices.exe tool, connect the player, and wait for any errors to be displayed. Microsoft suggests that for USB connections, people should wait a little for the “Zune” to appear in the device manager under portable devices. For wireless connections, owners are required to use the ‘settings-wireless-sync now’ on the device and wait for the “Zune” to display an error. It takes normally a couple of minutes after displaying “connecting to PC.”

Once the device has been disconnected, the users must should click on the ‘report’ tab of the tool, then click “save as” and save a copy of the report text. The file thus generated must then be sent to Microsoft’s Product Support Services for analysis.

Microsoft introduced the” Zune Diagnostic Tool” last year to take on Apple’s iPod, which dominates the market for portable media players. Microsoft upgraded the product line in the meantime for the holiday shopping season this year with improved 4-Gbyte, 8-Gbyte, and 80-Gbyte models that are much slimmer, sleeker, and sexier-to-the-touch than the original “Zune”, which many critics described as a “plastic brick”

In order to ensure the right and targeted market strategy for out racing the iPod of Apple and to ensure the correct linkage of the “Zune Diagnostic tool” with its own online store and software for managing music and video, Microsoft copied Apple’s strategy with the iPod and its iTunes software and store. Following the same marketing and piracy policy on the line of the Apple, Microsoft has also adopted a strategy to make it difficult for people who buy content from the ‘Zune Marketplace’ to play the files on other digital players.