The Gadgets Page

I’ve seen lots of advertisements for Microsoft’s new MP3 player, Zune. They all show the brown one turned on its side showing a picture, or maybe it’s a video, I can’t really tell from a print ad. I didn’t even bother looking at the price to see if it was worth it. Somehow, the Zune isn’t attracting my attention.

I feel like I SHOULD care… I write for a gadgets weblog. Shouldn’t I care about an MP3 player created by the most successful company in the world? Somehow it just seems wrong that I don’t.

To be honest, I wasn’t jumping up and down waving the Video iPod around when it came out. I looked at it and thought, “It’s about time. My Treo has been playing videos for months.”

Honestly, I don’t watch videos on my Treo anymore. I don’t even listen to music on my phone anymore. I just use it for contacts, calendar and answering calls. I listen to music on my computer more than anything else. I own an iPod Nano and use it for exercising, but really, I’m at my computer all day and out there running on the road for maybe 30-45 minutes a day.

Can Zune compete with iPod? I think a better question is can Zune compete with my laptop. Quite frankly, my little laptop has it beat. It has its own speakers, it can show video on a MUCH larger screen and it has far more usability and versatility than the Zune.

Plus, my laptop isn’t puke brown…