Review of Dell's Digital Jukebox

bu115hit writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of Dell's Digital Jukebox. The quick summary is that Dell has provided their own version of an iPod in size and shape, and they gave it better battery life. However, it seems the iPod is still a superior product overall, for ease of use if nothing else."

Comments

Both good

[t'mbert]

I own an iPod and a coworker of mine has the Dell. So I've seen and used both.

They are the only two units for sale right now worth having. The others are bulky, ugly, more expensive...why bother.

In the end I went with the lock-in. I bought the iPod becuase I bought alot of iTunes music, and I love my iTrip FM transmitter.

design, design, design

[fordgj]

I don't get it, why in this world of standards does Dell not make it act like a USB mass storage device? These are exactly the design decisions that make for flawed products. Moreover, these are the very same decisions that differentiate Apple products from the rest of the world. Macs can boot from the iPod, that's right, boot, let alone need some special driver (especially a driver that requires installation of gads of other software at the same time).

As someone who does a lot of travelling and moves around a bit, I see these things as digital wallets. Why else would you want 40 Gb? Dell's device might be more usefull if you could go to any computer with a reasonably modern OS and plug it in, without needing administrative access to install drivers.

There is another problem, USB. The iPod has firewire which doesn't need a host, I can only speculate that this is one of the reasons why Belkin chose firewire for their card reader. USB is good, it's good to have both, but when you want flexibility, USB has it's issues.

Sometimes it's just the little things that count, that make a good design great. When I go to work and work on pc hardware and Windows, I miss the details, nuance and elegance that makes working with my Mac at home a joy to use.