Zune Thoughts: How To Put Your Zune Into Sleep Mode

Because the Zune is based on a hard drive, it takes longer to boot up than a similar Flash-based device. To combat this, and to give the Zune the "instant on" that every user wants, the Zune goes into a suspended power state - kind of like standby mode on your PC. Pressing the Play/Pause button will bring it out of standby, where it's available for immediate use in about one second. Keeping the Zune in such an instant-on state takes a small amount of power however, which is why after 24 hours, it will shift down into sleep mode. But what if you want to put the Zune into sleep mode right after you're done using it, because you know you won't be using it again for 24 hours or more?

To force the Zune into sleep mode (which is when it's really off and consuming no battery power), press and hold the Back button then press down on the control pad. After four seconds or so, the Zune will go into sleep (off) mode and it will no longer use any battery power. To turn the Zune on again, you'll need to press and hold the Play/Pause button and it will boot up - taking 15 seconds to complete.

Special thanks to Harvey over at Zunerama for being the first to tell me about this tip (even though it's been known by others for a while - guess I wasn't paying attention).