Compare The Dell “DJ Ditty” To Any Apple iPod.

Buy a Mac and you have to look hard for the manual. Macs are easy to use out of the box. So is the iPod. Take it out of the box, plug into Mac or PC, make music. How about Dell’s new DJ Ditty?

Every couple of weeks there’s a new iPod killer on the market. Creative. Sony. Now Dell. Again. This isn’t their first iPod killer and it probably won’t be the last. There’s too much at stake.

What’s at stake, you ask? Money. Apple owns about 80-percent of the portable music market and about 80-percent of the online music download market.

That market is huge and growing faster every day. Dell wants their usual 50-percent market share and, like Sony and Creative before them, they’re getting desperate.

How desperate, you ask? The latest ditty to capture the hearts and minds of America’s youth and music inclined is exactly that-- a Dell DJ Ditty.

How does the Ditty compare to the Apple iPod shuffle? How about comparing it to the soon-to-be-best-seller-ever iPod nano? First the shuffle vs. the Ditty.

The Ditty small and light at 1.29 ounces vs. the shuffle at barely half that, .78 ounces. Hummingbird dandruff is heavier than a shuffle. By contrast, the iPod nano weighs 1.5 ounces.

The base model Dell Ditty has 512 megabytes of storage and up to 220 songs. The iPod shuffle base model has 512 megabytes and only holds 120 songs. Hmmm. What’s wrong with this picture?

Dell is so desperate that they’ve changed the quality of the recorded music to be half that of the iPod, so they can hold more songs in the Ditty.

If you’re so inclined to hear poor quality music, you can do the same on your iPod shuffle and hold 220 songs. Listening then becomes an option.

The Dell Ditty has an integrated FM tuner and an LCD screen. The shuffle just plays higher quality music and sound. The Ditty is compatible with Naptster To Go, and is not compatible with the No: 1 music download service or the No: 1 music player, Windows or Mac. That would be iTunes and the iTunes Music Store.

The Dell Ditty is about twice the thickness of the iPod nano, regardless of model. The nano, of course, will hold 1,000 songs. 2,000 songs if you don’t want to listen to them because the quality matches that of the Dell Ditty.

All models of the iPod (shuffle, nano, iPod, U2) will run for 12 to 15 hours; about the same as the Dell DJ Ditty.

The other Dell music players range in price from $179 for up to 2,500 songs (again, half the quality of music on an iPod) to $249 for the 20 gigabyte model. As of now, the Dell DJ 30, the 30 gigabyte model, which normally sells for $299 is just $239. Dell changes prices hourly.

Dell touts the Ditty and DJ as ‘freedome of choice’ music players. They work with whatever download service you want almost anywhere in the world. Except the world’s largest music download service. The one with the lowest prices, highest selection of songs, and the best music quality.

Let me summarize. Prices are about the same. Dell doesn’t work with iTunes or iTunes Music Store. The Dell DJ and Ditty are butt ugly. And Dell wants no one to know that the number of songs each will play are half the quality of music on an iPod.

No matter how you stack it up, DELL is just another four letter word.

Off Topic Note: I’ve updated the Mac360 Store with over 100 new categories-- More Macs, more iPods, more Mac books, more software. Click Here and select any category for more detail, or use the handy search function. Whenever you buy from Amazon through the Mac360 Store you help support Mac360. The Store has discounts and special pricing on Microsoft Office for Mac ($125), Apple’s iWork ‘08 suite ($62), and Adobe Photoshop Elements ($70). Where? At the newly remodeled Mac360 Store. Now with more fiber.