Well, you obviously know nothing about how the tech industry works. When you build something like this, you buy all the parts off the shelf, much as if you were a teenage hacker cobbling it together from parts you found laying around your parents garage.

In this case, it was probably a older revision of a chip that failed to return a result when you polled it for the time on the 366th day of the year.

Still this seems less lame than a phone manufacturer releasing a phone that barely works (unless you are right under a cell tower) and causes more RF intereference than any device I have used in my entire life.

If all the zune did was play music files, then you would be right. However you are wrong, because the zune does more than play music files.

IIRC, the zune also “squirts” music to other zune players, and then that user can play the song for three days or some such. The zune also has a subscription service, where you get all the music you want as long as you subscribe.

For that, the time needs to be referenced by system software. iPod system software also references the clock. It needs to expire rented movies.

1. Disconnect your Zune from USB and AC power sources.
2. Because the player is frozen, its battery will drain—this is good. Wait until the battery is empty and the screen goes black. If the battery was fully charged, this might take a couple of hours.
3. Wait until after noon GMT on January 1, 2009 (that’s 7 a.m. Eastern or 4 a.m. Pacific time).
4. Connect your Zune to either a USB port on the back or your computer or to AC power using the Zune AC Adapter and let it charge.

Once the battery has sufficient power, the player should start normally. No other action is required—you can go back to using your Zune!

this is stupid..
1. why IS A device WONDERING about the time? Software deletion??
2. tIME ON A DEVICE Should do NOTHING except tell time..
3. Leap year in 2008, NOT 2009..and HOW IN HELL did it Fail?? HOW did it KNOW the true time??
After Feb 29th, WHY is this device having a problem..

>>the solution on Zune website, quite simple.

Quite simple, and quite lame.

If this happened on some device built from toaster parts and transistor radios in a teenager’s garage, it would be one thing.

For M$FT – very, very lame.

Look at me, I can do anything you want me too, if you believe. You must believe and follow. Now Go, go and buy more MS software! Believe in me!!! Now go!

I have to say I dislike the Zune as much as the iPod. My old Rio Karma and Cowon iAudio X5 are both still fully functional after years of use and IMO are the best portable music players ever made.

The iPhone and iPod touch are nice, but I hate iTunes. Why the hell to I need to install 70 MB of Apple bloatware just to transfer songs to my device? I should be able to hook it up and access it like an external drive.

Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year. The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on. If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.

You know its funny, when I was researching the hit piece that Computerword did on Microsoft yesterday, google didn’t return any useful results. It only returned fosstard links. Google didn’t even return the wiki page… All the useful research came from live.com.

As I have used Live.com more and more over the last year, I am finding that the google algorithm is now a liability as far as research goes(google has been compromised by brand activists on virtually every topic), and you should seek out non-google search engines to do your googling.

BTW, I own 4 iPods and an iPhone. For me it is about being able to go to the department store and find a dock device… The sansa devices work fine… but… Everything audio comes with the dock btw.

Oh, and the iPhone plus streaming apps is not a replacement for XM radio.