Zunes stuck. iPod users laugh.

Users of Microsoft’s 30GB Zune had a real treat early this morning.  Their Zunes stopped working.  Oops!

It seems that around 2 am local time this morning, Zunes that were on locked up.  Zunes that were off promptly locked up upon power-up today.

Microsoft finally posted an update for the poor embattled Zune users at about 9am Pacific Time.

“Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!”

Sorry for the inconvenience, indeed.  Particularly humorous are posts on the Zune message boards recommending people buy iPods instead.  Ouch.  Salt in the wounds much?

It seems that there’s a DIY fix for this, as long as you don’t mind taking your Zune apart, and thus voiding the warranty…  I’m just happily cruising along with my iPod nano.  Yay.

Update: Last evening, there was official word from the Microsofties about a fix.  The details seem a bit sketchy in that post.  First, they blame it on a driver issue, then later they claim it’s related to bad code handling leap-year situations.  That is, Zunes blow up on the last day of a leap-year, and start working again on New Years Day.  Mind you, I’m not a device driver coder, but who on earth would put clock management code inside a device driver??  Seems more like a core OS function to me, since lots of things would need to access the clock.  After that explanation, which vaguely reads like, “We have no idea what we did wrong,” if I was a Zune guy, my Zune would now be on eBay, awaiting my iPod purchase.