A visit from the Zune squad

It was weird to own a Zune in 2005. It is even weirder to own a Zune in 2021 - let alone 16 of them. And yet, 27-year-old Conner Woods proudly shows off his lineup on a kitchen table. They come in all different colors, shapes, and sizes, and each can be identified by that telltale black plastic D-pad just below the screen. He owns the entire scope of the brief Zune lineup - from the svelte Zune 4 to the chunky Zune HD - and among the microscopic community of people who still adore Microsoft's much-derided MP3 player, no collection of dead tech could possibly be more enviable.

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But today, almost a decade after Microsoft terminated the brand, there is a small bastion of diehards who are still loving and listening to their Zunes. If you talk to them, they'll tell you that these MP3 players are the best pieces of hardware to ever run a Windows operating system. Preserving the Zune legacy has just become another part of the hobby.

I've never once seen a Zune in real life.