MicroSoft challenges iPod again
Don't look now, but Microsoft might finally be getting the hang of hardware. The company's overall track record for designing gadgets is pretty awful. Remember the Smart Display? The Spot Watch? The Ultra Mobile PC? The original Zune? But Microsoft's new second generation Zune music/photo/video player is a pleasure to use. It fixes a long list of things that made the original Zune such a pathetic wannabe. Best of all, the new Zune is starting to develop its own identity. The echoes of Microsoft executives saying, "It'll be just like the iPod, only ours" aren't quite as loud on this one. The family includes three new models. First, there's an 80 gigabyte hard drive Zune ($250) whose size, design, shape and price are intended to compete with the 80gig iPod Classic. Then there are the flash memory based models, which resemble last year's iPod Nano: thin, tall slabs that hold 4 or 8 gigabytes of music, photos and videos (for $150 an