Dell, you can't be serious

Today brings word Dell plans on re-entering the portable music player market. Really, Dell? Did you learn anything from the failed Dell DJ? (pictured above) I remember nights spent during my Apple breaks heading over to the Dell kiosk to razz the staff, and pretend to actually be impressed with the DJ. They knew as well as everyone else what a dud it was: those same employees were in the Apple Store later to buy iPods.

Moving on... A few notes. First, just about everyone except Microsoft has thrown in the towel on competing directly with the iPod. Sure competition's good, but given their track record, I don't think anyone expects anything particularly innovative, or game-changing from Dell. Secondly, the future of mp3 players is blah at best. Apple, and the industry is moving on. People don't want to carry a music player and a cell phone. At long last, at least for phones and music, convergence is here. Why not start a competing home DVD delivery service to take on Netflix while you're at it?

It way too little, jaw-droppingly too late, Dell

Rhapsody mp3 store review

The sites of digital music days of yore just keep coming back to life. This week Rhapsody announced the opening of their mp3 store component of their site. Touting the compatibility of the downloads with iTunes and the iPod, we had to check it out. If you want to check it out too, it's best to do it now as Rhapsody is offering a $10 credit (has to be used by midnight on the 4th) to try it. And if you do that, you'll discover the shortcomings of the site. Our full video review is below, but the gist of it is, their download manager software to automatically place the songs into iTunes is PC only, and the user interface really brings nothing new to the table. Still, with their $10 credit promotion (and supporting TV ads) it looks like they've gotten one part of the iTunes equation right: