This should be required reading. Some of the posts are just priceless!

Posted from my "the iPod phone." It's a niche device that only a few people know about, but I rather like it. [Chortle.]

Big fan of the original palm piece. It made sense to close with today's peice. Thanks. Good luck, I'm excited to see this new venue you're working on.

1. "Count on Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) to be as clever as the devil."

2. "The new Zune business model will turn Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) on its ear."

I think it's well past time to stick a fork in theses baseless suppositions.

Precisely DeusExMachina.

Jon, I've neither bashed you nor Microsoft. I didn't realize identifying you, based on your statements as a "casual user" was considered to be an insult. Nor was I aware that offering a well reasoned and honest opinion about how the Zune will be a huge failure is necessarily bashing. My position is that the model is half baked and focuses on the music distributors rather than customers and as a result it will fail.

As Donald Rumsfeld recently quipped, "Write it down. You can bank it."

As to your query; as an audiophile, I find out about new music from all various podcasts, All Songs Considered, I also subscribe to Rhapsody primarily for the purpose of listening to new albums in determining whether I want to buy them, after that I have a number of choices in terms of how to obtain and music and get it onto my iPod.

I can buy the music on Rhapsody or a CD and rip it into iTunes, I can simply buy it at iTunes, and there are other options.

I don't lease cars and I don't lease music. I like to own it.

And yes apparently Zune has tried to replicate Apple's integration, however according to every review I've read they failed to make it simple and accessible. 79 credits per dollar? What kind of nonsense is that?

As far as the radio, I detest it, I can only quote Art Brut and say that, "Popular culture, no longer applies to me."

"Yea, nice work people...how much money have you already spent on iTunes songs that you don't listen to anymore?" - Jon

Easy. $0.00. I have more than 15k songs in my library. My 80gb iPod is almost full. A 30gb zune would be absolutely useless to an audiophile like myself.

Casual listeners such as yourself may only listen to what's on the radio, but if that's the case get a WALKMAN circa 1980, save some cash and rock out!

I have no animosity toward Zune or MS. I am a PC user. But I assure you, this will be a bigger flop than "BOB."

Sorry, but this is no iPod killer. MSs point system and minimum investment of $5 to buy even one song at $.99 means that Mr. Gates will get to hold on to $4.01 of your hard earned cash is insulting.

We consumers don't like to have our intelligence insulted. I have five iPods in this house. I am a PC user. I've got Xbox and Playstation. I assure you that no Zune shall ever darken my doorstep.

Plays4sure, crippled wifi, giving "the man" a cut of my hard earned dough for the hardware??? -- these are these are George Allen sized blunders. George Allen-esque results shall surely follow.

Yes, music companies will obviously love this model, but one doesn't need to be prescient or even have a particularly good memory to know that the music companies' instincts in the digital music arena have flat wrong at every turn.

As currently conceived, Zune will be a tremendous dud.

Yeah, he's wrong. I was amoung the first to receive this phone, I got it last Saturday. And through about five hours worth of conferecing with Cingular, On the Go Solutions (my importer), and their discussions with HTC. The specks are wrong. This phone only supports GSM in the US. No Edge, no UMTS.

I confirmed this through hours of work and side by side tests with my 2125 and LG CU 500.

Bengalboy had a pre-production model that also had a camera on the front. Not the same hardware.