Some of you will remember that a few years ago I won a Zune. Sometime in 2007 there was a firmware update and it sucked — I no longer had the ability to add a single song to my “Zune library” which was frequently all I wanted or needed to do with the software. Thus, I vowed never to bother with firmware updates again since I had a free player that worked (mostly) how I liked it and I didn’t want to risk losing more features.
Well, today I am very grateful that I never bothered with the 3.x version of the firmware. One of the key features of this update was that, for the first time, the Zune got a clock (and also lost the “QuickList” feature — equivalent to “Playlist-On-The-Go” for iPod users). However, it seems that those fine programmers over at Microsoft forgot that 2008 has 366 days and Zune’s of my model everywhere are freezing up and freaking out. Google trends even indicates the problem (see 41, 53, 82, 88, and 94). But, according to Slashdot readers, it’s a firmware issue and those who never updated are fine. The official Zune site also claims that as long as you didn’t connect it to a computer before Noon GMT today, you’re also fine.
Way to be Microsoft. Didn’t the whole Y2K “crisis” teach you how our calendar works?
Luckily, my version 2.0 firmware is currently cranking out K.T. Tunstall as we speak having experienced no such problems… if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Edit: The Guardian appears to have uncovered the specific lines of code that caused the bug and indicates that it’s not really Microsoft’s fault — well, not the fault of their programmers anyhow. The QA department is a different story.
Jan1
Colossus of Rhode 
first, happy new year.
second: man, what’s the point of a media player if you can’t add single songs to it?
You can add folders of songs… and monitor said folders for new songs. But since I neither use the Zune software to manage my music nor keep my music in a single folder, if I want to add a new song, I now have to scan and “monitor” the folder it’s in — which was very slow on my old computer. (It’s not so much of a problem on my new machine… which is a Mac running Windows on a VM, go figure.) You can still add a single song to the Zune itself once the software on the machine has added it to the “library” — but getting it to the library on my old (slower) machine used to frequently crash things.