People are waking up on the longest day of the year, (86,401 seconds) to find that their 30GB Zune models are bricked. Slashdot reports the sudden cease of operation in Zunes worldwide, causing confusion and fears over Microsoft’s motives.

The public speculate an intent to brick all 30GB Zunes on this date in order to promote upgrading to a more expensive version, but this is likely to be due to more innocent circumstances, taking into account 2008 was a leap year with a leap second, a more controlled version of Y2K, or Z2K9 as dubbed by online communities may have occurred.

Symptoms include not being able to play music, the Zune locking up immediately when connecting to a PC, and performing a Hard Reset to no avail. The Zunes worldwide began to exhibit these symptoms simultaneously at 31 December 2008, 00:00 EST, where they entered the boot screen and began their state of zero functionality. Microsoft issued a statement explaining that this was a hardware fault to which a solution is currently underway.

The important issue is not to panic or let this affect our opinions of Microsoft, although our precious 30GB Zunes are currently disabled, we can take time to enjoy the other quirks of life besides music. I trust Microsoft will have a solution ready for 2009, and I will be blogging on the matter should it provide more news.

Alex Kara