[choyboy]

Nice try, but there's a reason no one has added a hard drive to a pocketpc and called it an ipod killer: battery life.

With the basic microprocessor in ipods, they as it is have only reasonable battery life. Do you honestly think a battery hog like the Intel PXA series is going to last anywhere near enough to run as a music player and as a pda and as whatever else? Not to mention the power-hungry hi res screen.

Convergence is nice and all, but battery technology just hasn't kept up. I can't use an atom as an ipod as well because I can't afford to have my battery die on me in the middle of an on-call shift at the hospital. Ditto goes fo rusing it as a video player.

Re: Zune: as with all things microsoft, the first 4 revisions will suck, but the 5th and subsequent revisions will be near enough to good enough to use properly. That's how windows finally became usable (but far from perfect), the same goes for windows mobile. While everyone is quick to call the xbox 360 a raging success, the poor penetration in some markets coupled with the lack of supply for most of the first and second quarter along with the lack of compettition to date mean this one is too close to call.

As usual, i'm sure microsoft will clobber the compettition with their billions, having easily enoug reserves to out last any compettitor, even Apple. THey've proved to date that no lead, no matter how large, is insurmountable in any market segment that microsoft cares to attack.