If your gadget isn’t up to your standards, just mod it and make it so. While searching for a replacement hard drive for his old school iRiver H300, Andrew decided to go with an SSD drive for more reliability. He couldn’t find the proper SSD drive to replace the H300s so instead he looked for a broken hard drive player to combine with an SSD drive.

So he found a broken Zune 120 and a refurbished SanDisk EIDE/PATA SSD drive and married them. Total cost was $130. If you want to do this yourself, Andrew has some instructions for you.

Archos’s 4.8-inch A5 series has already passed the FCC, and now we have price and capacity info on the device which will launch on September 15th. The A5 will come in two flash and two hard drive capacities, featuring a 16/32GB SSD or a 160/500GB HDD.

It will cost you $294 for the 16GB version, $370 for the 32GB, $320 for the 160GB and $420 for the 500GB version. Rumor is that the A5 will have 720p video output, but like the Zune HD, you’ll need to buy a dock. The dock for the A5 with DVR functionality is $130.

According to an alleged “software engineer” on the Zune team, the 16GB Zune HD should cost between $249 and $280 this September (a date that lines up with previous rumors.)

There are a lot of interesting rumors in the interview, like the fact that Microsoft is thinking about not only 16/32GB models but a 64GB Zune HD too. We have no idea what the price would be for that one.

The guys over at Gizmodo got a tip about the ZuneHD. “Internal Microsoft docs” point to a September 8 launch of the Zune HD. Their tipster also says that the device will be available in 16GB and 32GB versions.

One thing we don’t have is a price. We do know that the HD has Nvidia’s Tegra inside, so it’s a high powered, high performance device with HD output. How all of that affects the final price remains to be seen.

Another Zune phone rumor has surfaced. If it all pans out we may have a Zune phone this June. It all started with a Twitter update from the Microsoft Office 2010 team that stated, “June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers”, followed by another tweet mentioning “New product launch, that’s all I’m allowed to say. Hold off from buying an iPhone/Pre. :)”.

That suggests that this is more than a new Zune portable media player. Something to do with E3? That’s about all we know at the moment. At any rate, looks like it will be Zune this June.

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If you’re in the market for a Zune, why would you buy it from anywhere else? Nick’s Zune warehouse sells Zunes by the pound. They are totally dedicated to this, the most awesome portable media player ever. Remember this guy? Forget him. He missed out.

Come December 31st, you’ll be sorry you didn’t take advantage of Nick’s amazing deals. Nick’s an amazing …

Here’s more news for all of you Zune 30 owners who feel betrayed by your now frozen PMP. Microsoft has finally acknowledged the snafu and here is their explanation:

There is a bug in the internal clock driver that causes the device to bite the dust on the last day of a leap year. But don’t worry, even though they won’t be releasing an update for the device any time soon, it should resolve itself when January 1, 2009 comes around. Do you feel better now?

If you own a Zune 30, hopefully it isn’t stuck at a loading bar and completely non-functional. If it is, you are not the only one. The net is a buzz with users whose 30GB players began locking up at midnight last night, bricking themselves all on their own.

The failures are happening 24-hours ahead of the 2009 changeover, so Zune-lovers have named the flaw “Z2K.” It took some time, but finally Microsoft must have checked their overflowing email box e-mail, because the official Zune site now has a message stating that Microsoft is aware of the problem and “are working to correct it.”

Microsoft will announce price cuts across the board for its flash Zunes tomorrow. Good news if you are bargain shopping. hey aren’t Earth shattering deals, but every bit helps right? The 4GB model will drop to $100, the 8GB will go for $140 and 16GB for $180. The price drops make them all cheaper than the equivalent iPod nanos.

Microsoft said today it is launching a specially branded, limited edition Zune “produced in collaboration with Latin Grammy-nominated artists Wisin y Yandel.” This particular Zune will price around $200 and is for sale exclusively through Wal-Mart.

The Wisin y Yandel Zune is black, stylized and comes in in customized Wisin y Yandel packaging. It sports a 30 GB hard drive pre-loaded with the new Wisin y Yandel 19-track album, “Wisin vs. Yandel: Los Extraterrestres.” This portable media player has a three-inch color display and can store up to 7,500 songs, 25,000 pictures or 100 hours of video.

As the launch of the second generation Zune, or Zune 2, from Microsoft nears the rumors are flying at full steam regarding pricing and the features that the new media players will house. From what we’ve ascertained the launch is scheduled for October 3rd at midnight and will bring three new models of the Microsoft Zune player along with new features and content on the Zune Marketplace (iTunes for Zunes).

Along with some FCC leaks showing 4GB and 8GB flashed-based Zunes (codenamed “draco”), ZuneScene has the skinny on pricing along with some additional juicy details. These are still in the rumor stages mind you, but it looks like a new 80GB version will be going for $249 with an 8GB model going for $199 and a 4GB model for $149. The 8GB and 4GB models are expected to come in black, red, green or pink but the thinner 80GB will come in only black.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft made a decision to give the Zune a price cut by $50 the day Apple’s making an announcement about what many are expecting to be a new iPod. The company stated that this price cut is just part of the normal product life cycle and that some recent research indicated a 94% customer satisfaction result with the 30GB product causing them to lower the price so more customers can experience the Zune.

Does this mean we going to see a new Zune soon? Maybe that …

On June 10th Microsoft will be releasing a watermelon red version of its Zune media player. The new red color will be sold exclusively through Target and Amazon, and it looks to possibly be a limited edition version like the pink Zune with it’s 100,000 unit cap.

This watermelon Red Zune version joins the original colors of brown, black and white along with the pink version and the upcoming Halo 3 Zune expected in September.

Aside from the new red color, the functionality of the Zune will be just like the others with a 30GB capacity, 3-inch …

BLU:sens is unveiling an MP3 player called the G14 which has some significant features that should bring it a little attention in the PMP world. What makes this player extra special is that the attention is not due to them copying someone else’s design.

The BLU:sens G14 supports WiFi and has no DRM. Individually these two items have their own significance, but combined they equate to wireless sharing of MP3 files between players without restrictions. This will no doubt catch the eye of the Microsoft …

Reuters has recently reported that the Zune, Microsoft’s media player which launched in the US in November, could be launching for European customers before the end of 2007 but Microsoft is not ready to make the announcement official quite yet.

According to Jason Reindorp, Zune marketing director at Microsoft, they understand the competition they are up against with the Apple iPod, and ready to face the challenges. “You couldn’t get a more entrenched competitor,” he said at the annual music industry Midem Net conference in France. “But …