Zune On Ice

Right now in the Northeast, we're having a serious cold snap with temps today in the 20's. I had the opportunity to use my Zune outside today, and it didn't go so well.

There's always been a concern of hard drive players not performing well in temperature extremes. Recall that the Zune80 uses a 1.8" 80 gig hard drive, and that's not a good formula for rugged use. clearly a flash based player is better in this bitter cold, but I was still surprised at what I experienced.

My Zune 80 started up ok, and performed fine, until in the middle of three songs, all from different albums and ripped on separate occasions, the music would stop for around three seconds, and then continue on skipping over the missing interval of music. I even confirmed that it wasn't the track itself, and listened to it on my desktop, and that's not the problem.

It appears that the subzero temps simply don't mix well with my Zune. I think the only solution is to keep it inside on such days. I also think that it won't like the summer heat.

Does this make it a fair weather player? Has anyone experienced anything similar?

Jonas