Portable Media Player

Ahh, the good old FCC. It has been quite a resource lately, throwing previews of upcoming products at us left and right. Electronics manufacturers must absolutely adore this archaic government body.  Regardless, behold the new Zune that will soon be making its way to the shelves. You might be thinking to yourself, “hey, this looks just like the old zune!” You’re right, it does. The only revision this model will get is a hefty 50% increase in storage capacity. From the looks of it, everything else is untouched including the firmware version. The new model maintains the same dimensions as the existing 80 GB model thanks to the inclusion of the slender 1.8-inch hard drive Samsung announced last year. This, along with some decent pricing, may help the new model compete with the iPod Classic which is already available with a 160 GB well. Of course there’s always Zune Pass, a great little all-you-can-eat subscription service we’re sure you’re familiar with. Apple has yet to come up with a competitive offering, presumably to avoid cannibalizing iTunes sales. Considering how well iTunes is doing these days we suppose it’s understandable that it would avoid such a service. The new meatier Zune model will almost surely be available in time for the holidays and an unconfirmed educated guess puts the price tag around $300.

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