If you thought that the Zune HD needed some more color options, well here’s some good news. How does magenta and purple sound? Microsoft’s Zune Store now has options for purple and magenta colors for the player.

The colors will be available on December 1st, which is just in time for Santa to buy one for you. We don’t know if they will be available for both 16GB and 32GB versions, but we hope so. More options are always a good thing.

Until now, if you wanted to get HD Radio in a portable, handheld you had to buy a Zune HD. But Gigaware is leveling the playing field by opening up HD Radio to every iPod touch and iPhone user in the US.

The adapter allows any iPhone or iPod touch with iPhone OS 3.0 or greater the ability to listen to HD Radio and local FM stations. It’s available now for $79.99 exclusively at RadioShack. The accompanying app has a manual tune wheel or auto-seek, social network integration, bookmarks and iTunes Tagging and can be downloaded for free.

Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer may have inadvertently tipped off some plans for an external Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. He’s doubtful that it will ever be built-in but he tells Gizmodo that an external Blu-ray drive will be an option. He doesn’t go into detail but is unexpectedly confident that the hardware is enroute.

Company spokespeople asked about it wouldn’t confirm or deny, but do say that immediate plans focus on 1080p streaming video through the upcoming Zune Video Marketplace on the Xbox.

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.

The European Commission has set volume limits for MP3 players in all European Union member states. This means that your Zune HD or other mp3 player will not be allowed to output anything louder than 80 decibels under the default settings.

Officials argue that the limits are necessary since devices can play music at levels loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage and they do so without warning listeners. The EU mandate will still allow users to override the settings as long as they’re informed about the possible consequences.

Gizmodo has the skinny on the Pink.Project Pink is Microsoft’s new phone for regular joes. We heard rumors about the software months ago, but the hardware, as well as who’s making it has been a mystery. Anyhow, check out the first pictures of these Pink phones, the Turtle and Pure.

The phones will be made by Sharp and Pink will be aimed at the same market that uses the Sidekick. The Turtle kind of looks like a toy Palm Pre, while the Pure seems like your typical standard slider. Both are very…round-ish, with soft angles. Obviously plastic.

Arstechnica has a mole. No, it’s not as bad as it sounds. It doesn’t chew up the house or dig in the yard or anything, or hang off Cindy Crawford’s face. It just hands them info now and again. According to that mole, the updated 802.11n wireless adapter will be $100.

The older G adapter will drop down to $80. Still pretty expensive when you compare it to regular Wi-Fi adapters, but whatever. The new adapter has the ability to stream 1080p video and is tied to Microsoft’s upcoming Zune video store update to Xbox Live later this year.

According to a recent report from Gizmodo on Tuesday, Microsoft is confirming rumors that it actually does have a new dual-screen tablet in the works, codenamed Courier. According to the article and a short demo video, the Courier is a real thing and is more like a “booklet” than a tablet as it folds together and has two interactive touch screens side-by-side with loads of fast functionality.

The project has apparently been kept under pretty tight wraps with very few, both inside and outside of Microsoft, with knowledge about it. In fact, rumors are that the team working on the project, led by J. Allard (a designer involved in the Zune and the Xbox) has been kept away from the main Redmond campus to help keep it secret.

I am not sure how I feel about the companies that tear up perfectly good gadgets to show us what’s inside the shiny case. I guess it’s much better than me having to tear into my own gadget out of morbid curiosity.

The gang over at Rapid Repair has torn their shiny new Zune HD asunder for your viewing pleaser, or displeasure depending on how gadget squeamish you are. It appears that that teardown is relatively easy to accomplish and you are sure to void your warranty if you open your own up.

The new Zune HD arrives on Tuesday in the U.S., and if you haven’t already pre-ordered from Amazon, just enter the right coupon codes at Dell and you can save $43 on the 32GB model and $33 on the 16GB model.

That’s 15% off with free two-day shipping. It probably won’t arrive by Tuesday, but you’re getting a great deal. So grab your credit card, or fire up your PayPal account and check out LogicBUY for the code.

The Mac Vs. PC war shows no signs of slowing down. No matter which side you are on, chances are you have a friend on the opposing team. What better way to wage this war than with a friendly game of chess? Hey, if you lose, you can always take a sledgehammer to your buddies Zune/ipod.

Designer Adam Frederick created this chessboard design. Which side do you think would win? No offense to Adam, but I think the pieces need a little more thought put into them. The PC side isn’t nearly clunky enough and if you buy this set, the Mac side should cost you a fortune before you can even play.

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.

Leaked images and all sorts of rumors have run rampant about Microsoft’s Zune HD. The device is the latest Zune PMP from Microsoft to try to combat the Apple iPod. The Zune HD is aimed directly at the iPod touch.

Microsoft announced today that the player is set to hit store shelves on September 15 and is available for pre-order today. The HD will be offered in 16GB and 32GB capacities and is the first touch screen Zune player.

Gizmodo has some screenshots from Best Buy’s inventory system showing the 16GB and 32GB Zune HD models going on sale September 8th for $220 and $290. Those prices are pretty cheap compared to the current iPod touch pricing, so the Zune HD is looking super competitive.

Of course the touch’s prices are likely to get adjusted sometime after the Zune HD’s launch. We’ll see what happens. The Zune HD is looking better and better. Are you sold yet?

Over at CNET, they had a look at a recent build of the Zune HD. Apparently the device is getting close to a final product. The hardware received some praise as well as video playback and a the music player, which has been refined. They really liked the Zune HD’s browser and found it to be excellent.

It was built by the IE team, which is good news for prospective Windows Mobile 6.5 users, and it’s comparable to the iPhone in features as well as speed. You get pinch to zoom, accelerometer-based reorientation, and a decent onscreen keyboard. No Flash though. All in all it sounds fairly awesome.