Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Looks like the FCC got its hands on one of one of the spankin' new devices and put it through the hoops. Lots of geek stuff (it has a Samsung LCD and a Toshiba HDD), but lacking in any cool photographs--Microsoft requested they keep these out of the public eye for a while, something about competitors or something. If you're the type to wonder about the resistance or composition of the included premium headphones, check it out. If not, rest easy knowing that we're one step closer to seeing this thing in action.

Ah, you've just got to love the FCC and the way their public disclosure process ruins the secrets of many a company. Interestingly enough I've been told (so this could be false) that there's some sort of check-box the company can select when submitting their product to have it NOT appear on the public site...yet no one seems to do it. Apparently some things have been withheld though.

At any rate, these drawings confirm what we already know: there's a 4 GB and 8 GB Flash-based Zune coming from Microsoft. We were all about 90% sure, but we now know that the devices will also have WiFi built-in (coming from a Marvel 88W8686 chipset) - so it looks like the social is coming to these new Zunes as well. The question is, will the WiFi on these new Zunes do anything more than the last Zunes? I sure hope so, or these products are going to be hammered on as heavily as the last generation.