Peter Griffin: Shopping for a music player

In the air-conditioned cool of Singapore's Lucky Plaza electronics centre last week I finally gave in to temptation and bought an Apple iPod music player.

It was the people I was travelling with who pushed me over the edge. Sporting their iPods, Nanos and Minis, they raved about the players' ease of use and how the iPod has become the coolest device on the planet. They were cynical journalists but their message was as convincing as if it had come from Apple's marketing department.

So when Xavier, the electronics wheeler dealer I was negotiating with, tried to sell me the rival Creative Zen Vision M music player I wasn't interested in his spiel.

He diligently attempted to tell me what I already knew - that the iPod is over-rated and has nowhere near as many functions as the Zen. The Zen was also $20 cheaper.

But I was having none of it. With glowing endorsements ringing in my ears and knowing that over 60 per cent of music players sold worldwide are iPods - I pointed at the black, shrink-wrapped iPod box.

Xavier shrugged his shoulders and with weary resignation plucked it from his glass cabinet. He gave me a good deal - $472 for the new 30GB video-capable iPod and I was refunded the GST at the airport, taking the actual price down to $445.

Back at the hotel, I was welcomed to the iPod club. The Zen was disparaged and everyone agreed Xavier had given me a good deal.

However, as I flew home listening to Dark Side of the Moon on my new little player at 39,000 feet, I couldn't stop thinking that I'd bought the wrong device. After all, the Zen would have worked seamlessly with Windows Media Player, which I've been using for years to browse and play songs stored on my hard drive.

Now I have to import all my music into iTunes, which converts the files to Apple's proprietary AAC format.

The Zen has a higher resolution colour screen so any video I choose to watch on it would have looked better than it would on the iPod's screen. It also supports a wider variety of video and audio file formats than the iPod.

Xavier's reasoning voice haunted me: the iPod has an FM radio tuner and recorder and a voice recorder. It also has line-in to record music from CD players and a video out port so all the videos stored on it can be shown on a TV screen. The iPod has none of those useful little extras.

At least with the Zen I'd have been able to frequent local music download stores like Digirama and Amplifier, which offer files in Microsoft's WMA format. Apple's iTunes store and sole source of online music downloads for the iPod is not available here.

It also occurs to me now that my timing in buying an iPod was bad. I've joined the Apple camp just as Microsoft prepares for an offensive in the digital music market, one that may have serious appeal for an old-school Windows-centric user like me.

It seems that Microsoft will have an iPod rival in the market by Christmas.

Unconfirmed internet reports suggest it will be called the "Zune" and early unsourced photos have it resembling the iPod with a bigger screen but nowhere near as sexy a profile.

It is expected to be "wi-fi" enabled so you would be able to go to a wireless internet hotspot, connect to an online music store and download tracks direct to the device. There may even be a version that supports Xbox handheld gaming.

The Window Media Player 11 test software, which I've been using, points to the other side of the equation; Microsoft's equivalent of iTunes and rumours are that Microsoft's player will be able to access a large section of Apple's own iTunes.com store.

Microsoft has its own download service in Urge, which will become closely integrated with Windows Media Player.

Windows Media Player 11 looks good but Microsoft's end-to-end multimedia strategy won't come together until the launch of new operating system Vista next year. One thing is certain: Microsoft sees multimedia as central to its future.

Technology never stands still and you buy any gadget knowing that it'll be obsolete within three months.

If my gadget-buying expedition taught me anything it's that investing in technology is not influenced by the number of features a device has.

You buy into a culture, a mystique. In that sense the iPod is the more seductive.