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With my Sprint contract running out and having been frustrated with my HTC Mogul--more like Windows Mobile 6--it was clearly time to upgrade.

Our smartphone senior editor Bonnie Cha pointed me in the direction of the Palm Pre since I was adamant about having a touch-screen and physical keyboard. I was also drawn to the Pre because of the new WebOS operation system and Synergy functionality.

After having waited in line for almost two hours outside a Sprint store in downtown Manhattan, I was thrilled to get home and start playing around with my new Palm Pre.

A few hours later disaster struck. The phone began occasionally resetting when I opened or closed the sliding keyboard (see embedded video). A day later, it happens almost every time. After some quick searching on the PreCentral.net forums, I found that I was not alone. The issue doesn't seem to be widespread, but there are people out there who are experiencing the same thing.

Unfortunately, the Pre seems to be sold out everywhere here in Manhattan, so getting a replacement isn't going to be easy.

Anyone else having similar problems?

Make sure to check out today's episode of The 404 for an extended look at my Palm Pre situation and more launch day stories!

A leap-year issue with Microsoft's Zune music player is still leaving many users cold, despite the company's reassurance that all would be well by sometime on New Year's Day.

Postings on Zune message boards Thursday morning, as people tried out Microsoft's recommendations and fellow Zune users' suggestions, ranged from the hopeful...

"The wipe process should only take a minute or two. If it is hanging on this screen, disconnect it from power, let the battery drain, and then reconnect it to start the device again," user Raw Deluxe wrote on Zune Forums.

...to the melancholy:

"Mine never made it back. The battery drained ok, but it tried to start one time and is now good and dead. I talked to support and they agreed - its a brick," wrote brotherdiesel.

Scores of Zune users on Wednesday -- the last day of a 366-day leap year -- reported that their 30GB Zune devices were freezing up. Complaints rippled across message boards as people booted up the gadgets and found they could not get to their songs or pictures.

By the middle of the day, Microsoft had identified the root of the problem: the Zune's internal clock was stumbling as it tried to handle a leap year. (See Microsoft's Zune support site for more details.) Things would start to resolve themselves, the company said in its Zune 30 FAQ, by noon GMT (4 a.m. PT), and it advised users with frozen Zunes to follow these steps:

1. Disconnect your Zune from USB and AC power sources.
2. Because the player is frozen, its battery will drain--this is good. Wait until the battery is empty and the screen goes black. If the battery was fully charged, this might take a couple of hours.
3. Wait until after noon GMT on January 1, 2009 (that's 7 a.m. Eastern or 4 a.m. Pacific time).
4. Connect your Zune to either a USB port on the back or your computer or to AC power using the Zune AC Adapter and let it charge.

One ZuneBoards forum user claimed to have identified the actual trouble spot in the clock driver code. (A tip of the hat to Ars Technica for spotting the post.)

"The Zune's real-time clock stores the time in terms of days and seconds since January 1st, 1980," wrote user itsnotabigtruck. "The Zune frontend first accesses the clock toward the end of the boot sequence. Doing this triggers the code that reads the clock and converts it to a date and time." The post continues:

Under normal circumstances, this works just fine. The function keeps subtracting either 365 or 366 until it gets down to less than a year's worth of days, which it then turns into the month and day of month. Thing is, in the case of the last day of a leap year, it keeps going until it hits 366. Thanks to the if (days > 366), it stops subtracting anything if the loop happens to be on a leap year. But 366 is too large to break out of the main loop, meaning that the Zune keeps looping forever and doesn't do anything else.

For those who hadn't yet run into problems, Microsoft said to refrain from connecting the Zune to a PC before noon GMT on Thursday.

To disconnect the battery, or not to disconnect the battery
Microsoft strongly advised users to ignore advice from forum visitors who suggested disconnecting the Zune's battery to reset the device:

This is a bad idea and we do not recommend opening your Zune by yourself (for one thing, doing so will void your warranty). However, if you've already opened it, do one of the following:
• Wait 24 hours from the time that you reset the Zune and then sync with your computer to refresh the usage rights; or
• Delete the player's content using the Zune software (go to Settings, Device, Sync Options, Erase All Content), then re-sync it from your collection.

Judging from forum comments Thursday morning, however, a number of users had indeed disconnected the battery.

"I got tired of waiting.....opened it up and did a hard reset. Seems that 'triggered' it cause now its telling me to connect it to my PC and then open the Zune software and restore the firmware. It seems to be seeing it.....hopefully all is on the road to recovery," wrote floozuki.

By midday Pacific Time on Thursday, some users found life returning to normal for their Zunes: "Mine came back today just as advertised.... all songs intact...no worries.....," wrote DadGuy, though it wasn't clear which recovery method he had followed.

But others griped that the New Year's freeze was just the latest in a series of problems they'd been facing. Said emilysuz:

I tried the button combo, it's currently stuck on 'Connect Zune to your PC' but it is currently plugged in to my PC. I have had trouble with this thing fopr days, before the widespread crash and I'm beginning to think this thing is just your garden variety piece of crap. I loved my Zune until the battery wouldn't charge. Maybe my Zune troiuble is not the same. It refuses to charge, it only charges long enough to tell me my battery is low and then it dies again, even if it's plugged up. It won't sync, wired or wireless. Again, I love my Zune, but if it's dead it's no good to me.

User JediFarfy sought to mollify emilysuz about the Zune's failure to sync:

Mine wouldn't at first, so I kept disconnecting it and reconnecting it on both ends (comp and Zune). Took about 4 times and it finally connected. Your Zune had a rough, confusing day, give it some love and it'll be fine.

See also:
• I want to believe: Reflections on my Zune year
• The new Zunes in action

Looks like the Midwest isn't the only thing that's freezing up this holiday season: many people are reporting that their 30GB Zunes are spontaneously going on the fritz as well.

Microsoft's Zune MP3 player.

(Credit: Microsoft)

The symptom is being reported widely on discussion boards about Microsoft's music player, including Zune.net, Zune User Community Forums, and ZuneScene. With the problem, people's Zunes reboot but freeze when the startup status bar reaches 100 percent.

Some users reported the problem happened at exactly midnight PST, at the very beginning of the last day of the year. That timing led some wags to call the problem Z2K after the Y2K problem that was widely feared to cripple the computing industry when computer clocks moved from 1999 to 2000.

"It reset itself. I don't know why," said one owner who posted an account of his Zune problem on YouTube after reporting it on the Zune.net forum.

Microsoft didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning, but issued a statement later in the day (see below).

"I hate to say it but I believe this is the end of the road for the Zune and I. Just as I was happy with the last update and things were fine, we get another major meltdown. I was always supportive and had good things to say about my Zune to those that would ask, however this is the nail in the coffin," griped user Redinight on a ZuneScene discussion board. "I can't take it anymore. I can't sit here all the time and wonder what Microsoft does right or wrong anymore, I just want to get up and go listen to my music. Listening to music is about the last thing I do with my Zune. I always have to reinstall, download new firmware, or wait for the slow software to catch up. Now this? I want to throw it away and never look back."

Next time you're faced with the prospect of making a long drive late at night, you'll probably wish you had this new technology from Fujitsu Labs.

Fujitsu's new tech hopes to prevent this.

(Credit: TotalCarCrash.com)

The company is working on a steering wheel sensor system that detects when a driver begins to get drowsy or doze off. The sensors keep track of the driver's heart rate through his or her hands on the wheel while steering. As a person gets closer to falling asleep, the heart rate begins to regulate.

Once the system detects a driver getting ready to fall asleep, several things could happen: the windows could automatically roll down, the car's radio could be turned up, or there could be sensory feedback from the steering wheel to jolt someone awake.

The system isn't a finished product. Right now, it's still in the research and development phase, but the company hopes to have production models for consumer vehicles as well as commercial trucks ready by 2010.

Fujitsu isn't the only company looking to prevent unnecessary asleep-at-the-wheel accidents. Micron has been working on a camera system to monitor and protect drivers. And Delphi has been developing an eye-tracking system that measures the blink rate of a driver, which could indicate when a driver is getting drowsy.

Maybe I give off some unusual electrical impulse, but whatever the reason, I'm the guy who can crash any computer or application in no time flat. Hard drives melt down under my fingers, I get a couple of BSODs a week at least, and naturally, I've even managed to crash Google's new supposedly super-stable browser, Chrome.

That in itself isn't terribly noteworthy, but I did appreciate the humorous message Chrome gave me (while trying to preview an upcoming CNET review), so I screengrabbed it for your viewing pleasure.

A new exploit will either lock up your iPhone or iPod Touch or crash your Safari browser on your PC or Mac OS desktop if you simply visit a maliciously coded Web site. Unlike an earlier exploit that required users to click to become infected, the new code published by iPhoneWorld requires no user interaction.

So far, Apple has had no comment.

The code was first reported in January and exhausts the memory in Safari, which in turn will cause your iPhone or iPod Touch to freeze, or your desktop Safari to crash. "Given the nature of this issue," said the BugTraq newsgroup vulnerability report, "remote code execution may also be possible, but this has not been confirmed."

There is no patch available from Apple. The recommended workaround is to disable Javascript within Safari. To do so:

1. Under Edit, click Preferences.
2. Click the Security icon.
3. Uncheck Enable JavaScript.
4. Close and restart Safari.

Our review of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard last Thursday lauded its lovely interface innovations but withheld judgment about the operating system's speed until we could put it through its paces.

Tests returned from CNET Labs on Saturday show that Leopard didn't perform noticeably faster than Mac OS 10.4.6 Tiger. (See the chart in CNET's review of Tiger.). Because Leopard's improved speeds of between 1 percent and 3 percent fall within the 5 percent margin of error, it's fair to call Leopard and Tiger even.

GarageBand wouldn't run the first time we opened it in Leopard.

Lab tests explored Leopard's boot time, multimedia multitasking, and handling of the Quake 3 game. Similarly, the 2005 release of Tiger did not demonstrate vast speed improvements over Panther, a previous version of Mac OS X.

Still, some users commenting on Leopard-related message boards and stories at CNET and elsewhere swore that they detected faster performance with Leopard.

Unfortunately, CNET Labs could not vouch for the performance of Adobe Systems' Photoshop CS3, which, for reasons not yet understood, wouldn't run on Leopard in our usual battery of automated tests. Don't jump to conclusions, however; the photo-editing application seemed to behave under normal conditions, and Adobe insists that Photoshop can run in Leopard.

However, full Leopard support for all versions of Adobe Creative Suite 3 won't become available until Adobe releases updates in three to four months. Among the applications needing updates are AfterEffects, Premiere, Soundbooth, and Acrobat Pro 8.1.2 (PDF). Sadly, Adobe fans cannot count on running earlier iterations of the Creative Suite or Macromedia Studio uneventfully within Leopard.

Although we find Leopard's interface relatively seamless, the same can't be said for everyone's experience getting started. Some people reported installation headaches, including the famed "blue screen of death," which historically has made so many love to hate the rival Microsoft Windows. Apple has acknowledged that issue as a glitch with third-party software.

Another application that won't run properly in Leopard yet is FileMaker Pro 9, due for an update next month. Some at CNET have found other applications, such as Groupcal and Parallels, failing unexpectedly in Leopard. And although only Safari was also running at the time, GarageBand wouldn't run in our first two attempts to open it in Leopard. A reboot seemed to do the trick.

Leopard also appeared to be converting some Mail settings from administrator to standard accounts; MacFixIt explains a solution. We're looking into these and other issues, and will continue to update our Leopard review as we learn more.

Our conclusion remains that you must have Leopard if you need to run Boot Camp, and you'll want it if you eagerly await Time Machine's elegant backup system. Developers will also like the full, native 64-bit support for both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs.

Yet the majority of obvious improvements are on Leopard's surface. That isn't necessarily a bad thing; interface tweaks like Cover Flow, Quick Look, Spaces and Stacks offer powerful, practical improvements that make it easier to multitask. The operating system overall is a treat to use, even if it's unlikely to deliver preternatural speed.

So unless $129 feels like a trifle to spend, holding off on this upgrade wouldn't hurt. Depending upon your software toolkit of choice, waiting for third-party applications to catch up to Leopard might even save some frustration.

(Credit: iShoes)

Something tells us that Ilya and Borish Kaganovich have more than a few scars on their knees. The two brothers are the inventors of the "iShoes," which are kind of a mashup of the Segway and motorized skateboards for your feet--and they look just as dorksome, if not worse.

Each pair has 4-inch wheels and weighs a total of 16 pounds but can still hit 15 miles per hour, according to Coolest-Gadgets. The shoes--which come in men's and women's sizes, if they get beyond the prototype phase--can reportedly go 5 to 7 miles without recharging the batteries.

They might be great for younger, more coordinated types, but not us. Just viewing the iShoes in action (video below) makes us want to climb into an "Armchair Cruiser."

(Credit: Clarion)

It may be a sad commentary on modern society, but we fully understand why people would want to install cameras in their cars specifically to document what exactly might happen in an accident. We just don't think the ideal solution is a model so big that it could obstruct a driver's view and possibly cause the very accident it's trying to monitor--no matter what Paris Hilton's parents have to say about it.

Clarion's "DriveEye" may be a good compromise, though Technabob says it's available only in Japan at present for about $412. It's small enough to be mounted on the windshield without blocking the main line of sight and doesn't look like a bank's security camera as other models do.

As do other automotive black boxes, the DriveEye automatically starts to digitally record the action upon detecting sudden braking and, if a crash does occur, saves up to 15 seconds of video before it happens and 5 seconds after. But be careful not to confuse it for other cameras installed overhead, or you may inadvertently cause the crash you're so worried about.