Your questions: What’s the best way to shutdown a Zune and maintain battery life?

This in the mailbag over the weekend… a question that I didn’t know the answer, and one that benefits my soon-to-be nine-year-old son….

“I have a Zune and when I turn it off by using the play/pause button down, the battery life seems to die after a couple of days. What’s the best way to shutdown a Zune and maintain battery life?”

Here is Josh Goldman’s entry on “Zune’s Secret Shutdown Extends Battery Life” from the crunchgear blog…

“Instead of holding the pause/play button down till the screen goes dim, try holding down the down button on the directional pad along with the Back button at the same time.

“This sends the Zune into a deeper state of offness. It takes just a few more seconds to get up and running again (and I mean only a few) and it’s a fresh restart, so it opens up to the home screen, not what was playing before you shut it off. But hey, seems like a small price for some extra Zune-time.”

Also see a simple trick for extending Zune battery life (from zunerama)

And of course, the Zune is now available in Pink…