Well my new replacement Zune has arrived and the good news is that this one is functioning normally, at least for the past couple of days since its return. I will say that the turn-around time for the second replacement Zune was quite fast, as Microsoft had stated it would be. With waiting for the return-shipping box and then the back and forth, it was approximately three weeks.

So I am completely enthralled with having a functional Zune 80 yet again. It had been far too long, over two months since I had a functioning device and it is great to be back in the land of portable media playback. Also, to my surprise, Microsoft even sent me a Zune branded sock or pouch/carrying case as a little bonus. I was not expecting anything and would have been satisfied with a functional Zune, but it was a nice touch on their part.

I received my replacement Zune 80 yesterday after having sent in my original for repair about 5 week back. My first Zune became unresponsive and I was no longer able to access the media on the device or connect it successfully with my Vista PC. I went through the whole process with Zune support on reinstalling the Zune software and trying to do a hard reset on the device to no avail.

My replacement device, only being a day old, is now having issues with the battery losing its charge so I now have to send this new device in once again, and then wait for this repair process to repeat itself. Given my experience with this device, it is hard to fully recommend it. Apparently it suffers from various hardware issues such as the aforementioned ones which have kept me from utilizing the device for the past several weeks.