There were two reasons I hadn't yet gotten a Zune: 1) because Vista didn't yet support Zune's software and 2) because my wife asked me to mellow on the spending prior to x-mas... I knew though, given that Christmas is a huge deal for all gadgetiers that the Mothership would certainly want their newest coolest device supported on their newest coolest OS and I hoped (ok I begged so much I practically knew) I'd be getting one for being a good boy ;-).
F*@%! YES!! I got what I'd been waiting for for Christmas, the little brown gem. After opening the package, showing off to the family and getting on my happy dance I thought: crap, Vista doesn't yet support it. And yup: while attempting the out-of-the-box install I got an incompat message and couldn't go any further. I was out at mom’s house in California and, of course, they don't have a wireless network (freaking out right about now).
So I waited up late, till about 3:00a: I snuck in the office, pulled their network jack and plugged in. At first, I started searching the web and found a number of posts that showed how the install could be "hacked" using the Windows SDK's Orca.exe ya-da-ya-da. Then I decided to take a look at the Zune site to see if there might be an update (I know - wrong order). Ah-ha! Microsoft comes through. The Zune site had an updated ZuneSetup.exe that provided Vista support for my new "little friend".
Here's her glam shot:

The Zune Pass is hooked up and I've even spent some Microsoft Points on some long needed music. Definitely liking the Zune Marketplace so far. I'll make sure and post about the real experience as soon as I get back to town...
Technorati tags:
Windows Vista,
Zune