At long last its real, it's fantastic, and it's available to buy. Microsoft have released the Portable Media Center, a hardware and OS combination (in much the same way as the Tablet PC is a hardware and OS combination) designed to compete with Apple's sexy white iPod (you know - the one with the white headphones and the battery about as effective as my armpit).
The first to hit the market is the Creative Zen, and it looks like this
It's got a 20 gig drive, but there's a 40 gig model coming, supports music, pictures and sound, has a built in speaker, full A/V out connections, a head phone socket and a set of controls on the front that you just know mean this baby is going to play games at some point. Total price $499 dollars. Not bad for a device that will do everything an iPod can, and everything an iPod can't. Perhaps even more appealing to the millions of battery impaired iPod owners out there is the fact that this thing has an interchangable battery that doesn't require you to send the device back to the manufacturer for a month or two when the battery gives up the ghost. Better yet, for those really long trips, why not just pack a spare - can't do that with an iPod.
Of course Creative aren't the only players in the game. Samsung will be along pretty soon with their player (see below) and there are still rumours that Microsoft is going to make a big noise about something super secret (their own player perhaps) in mid October.
You can read the full story over at msnbc, at this link.
11:51:22 AM 
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