Dell To Take A Crack At That Big Fad, The iPod, Again

from the a-day-late-and-a-gig-short dept

Dell's DJ line of MP3 players has lived in the shadow of the iPod, despite their lower prices, for some time now. Dell plans to fire another salvo at Apple, updating the line with smaller models and including features like FM tuners and satellite radio, even though the iPod's success would indicate those types of things aren't at the tops of consumers' lists when shopping for a music player. Mostly, though, it's following Dell's "copy everyone else" electronics strategy, with a special pink DJ and a Shuffle-a-like called the "Ditty". Apparently Dell is going to advertise its 512MB Ditty as being able to hold double the number of songs as a 512MB iPod Shuffle -- an easy feat when you base your calculations on a bit rate half the size of what Apple uses. In any case, this seems like an awful lot of fuss to try to compete with a product Dell's CEO calls a fad.