Hey folks - I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I took a short hiatus from blogging for several days but I’m now back in action. Stay tuned for reviews of the new Zune 80 as well as a detailed look into the new Zune software application. In the meantime, let’s try and catch up on some of the more recent interesting news bits.

Perhaps the most telling sign of the rising popularity of the new Zune media player is from Black Friday sales. According to this article over at Wired.com, the Zune player (both Zune 30 and Zune 80) was the second most purchased item on the web for Black Friday. This was right behind the Nintendo Wii which was the most sought after item for Black Friday for the second year in a row (not surprising there). The data was gathered by online retailers, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, and eBay. What’s not entirely clear is what percentage was for the older Zune 30 vs. the new Zune 80 player. Since the Zune 80 is still relatively hard to find, it’s safe to assume that many people are going after the older Zune 30’s - especially since they’ve become rather affordable over the last month. First generation player combined with the latest software update makes for a successful media player finally.

One final note from the Wired.com article - it should be noted that final numbers from the likes of Amazon.com and other retailers have not come in as of yet.. so the Zune may still fall down the list. However, it’s still not a bad start to the holiday shopping season for Microsoft and the Zune team.

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Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Zune, Black Friday, Wired.com