According to Zune.net, the fix for the dead Zunes is dead simple:

My Zune 30 is frozen. What should I do?

Follow these steps:

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!

Let’s see if this really works. Good luck to all that’s affected.

[ Zune.net ]

Apparently at 12am, any Zune 30 that had been updated with the most current firmware just stopped working. Mind you, I own a Zune 120 but even so, this might affect my Zune as well.

The following sites are covering the story as it develops:

Engadget: [ 30GB Zunes Mysteriously Begin to Fail ]
Gizmodo: [ All Together Now!: 30GB Zunes Failing All At Once ]

I’ll update this post as I receive updates too. Two friends, two dead Zunes. All hail the Zune-ocalypse!

And on the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to the Computer User:

Combined with marathon gaming sessions and many hours of Adobe Photoshop, a good, comfortable mouse is definitely something that’s on each and every geek’s list at one time or another. Enter the Microsoft Blue Track Explorer Mouse. And Microsoft delivered a blue LED (yummy!) enabled mouse that can track movement on just about any surface. Table top, glass, your flannel shirt, that week old pizza slice… it’s all game for the new blue LED tracking dubbed BlueTrack™.

Yeah, I bet Bill Gates thought of that one by himself. Read the rest of this entry »

Seems like the replacement to Microsoft Vista is quickly coming… and it couldn’t get here any sooner. Since this has been covered all over the internet ad nauseum, I thought I’d just link to the more interesting stories out there:

• Engadget: Windows 7 Details Galore
• Ars Technica: First Look at Windows 7’s User Interface
• Technologizer: First Windows 7 Hands-on
• Microsoft: PDC Keynote Showcase

Now… just make it boot faster than Vista, have less processes than Vista, make it less annoying than Vista, and above all add ZFS and WinFS. I know you can do it Microsoft…

Take a look at line seven of the properties of the title picture. Yep, that’s right Adobe Photoshop CS3 MAC! The computer world is apparently laughing its ass off that the advertising folks that made the Microsoft ads, seem to have done so using Macs. They are creative types, that work for soulless advertising agencies - of course they do. [Computer World via Geekologie]

Link to the original article…

I won’t be scientific, post up a bunch of numbers that mean a lot to a few esoteric people; nor even give you anything more than just one simple opinion… Microsoft Vista SP1 is not harmful, but it doesn’t make things any better. Well, maybe 0.1% better than the original install.

It doesn’t really add any new features that I can immediately tell. It doesn’t reduce the memory usage. It doesn’t even make my Vista experience on an AMD 6400+ Black edition processor with SATAII drives, 2GB of Corsair memory and an ATi HD 2600XT with 512mb GDDR3 memory seem any faster.

In fact, it really didn’t make anything break, slower or worse.

And that’s a good thing. Microsoft didn’t break anything. My anti-virus software still works. As does my NetLimiter Pro firewall. As does my MagicJack, Skype, Pidgin, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash. I still have to clean up crap with CCleaner occasionally, and above all it didn’t stop VLC from working…

It didn’t make anything seem faster, but it didn’t make anything seem slower. So… job well done Microsoft. You had the chance to make Vista seem better… and you didn’t capitalize.

If it makes you feel better, I feel like Leopard, before Apple OS X 10.5.2 that is, had slowed down on superior software. Running Windows XP on this same machine is like moving at mach speed. Running OS X 10.4.11 on the same hardware seems to make 10.5/10.5.1 seem slow as well. At least 10.5.2 made things better, at least on the machines that I use.

Here’s to hoping that SP2 make Vista better; SP1 did not.