Microsoft, Sony Announce iPod Competitors

Pfhreak writes "According to the Denver Post -- Las Vegas section, a little over halfway down the page -- Microsoft will begin selling a $50 music player that will 'look and feel as good as the iPod' later this year. Yusuf Mehdi, a Microsoft VP, is quoted as saying that the player will give customers more choices than Apple." In related news, Tetsugaku-San writes "The Register has the scoop on Sony's new portable audio/visual playback device. Impressively it plays MPEG2, MPEG4, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF and MP3 (finally they got the message Apple was gonna whoop em!) straight out of the box. Not as good battery life as I'd like to see, but real world tests remain to be seen."