iPods Still Rule

If you were hoping I'd break with recent tradition in my review of Apple's latest iPods yesterday, sorry, I still like the iPod.

This time, however, I thought I'd make the review a little less Apple-centric: I put a new iPod nano and iPod in a head-to-head test against two Windows Media-based players that I've seen draw favorable comparisons -- the Toshiba Gigabeat S60 and the SanDisk Sansa e280. Surely, I thought, these gadgets will beat the iPod in at least some important areas.

They didn't.

They fell short in almost every category -- objective things like battery life, weight, number of button presses needed to do a particular task and the number of actions needed to synchronize music from the computer. The companies behind these players couldn't even create decent Web pages and packaging.

I'm genuinely puzzled how so many companies keep fumbling like this. They can get the size and shape about right, but not the important stuff on the inside.

The next challenge to the iPod is coming soon. Microsoft recently announced that its Zune player will ship Nov. 14. This 30-gigabyte, wireless-enabled, music- and movie-compatible player will sell for $250.

Painful Presentation and Packaging

I've previously ranted about the inadequacies of Toshiba's computer division's Web site. Its uninformative and unorganized display of laptops looks like Amazon compared to its gratuitously annoying Gigabeat.com site.

The entire thing is one huge Flash animation. It takes time to load (even over DSL), has an intro you have to skip past on each visit and plays unwanted music automatically. You can't bookmark any of this site's sections for later reference. Also, it's just plain ugly.

SanDisk, meanwhile, saves its customer hostility for when you take it home. Not only does this player ship in a large, wasteful box (about six times the volume of the iPod nano's packaging), its cardboard confines come imprisoned inside a plastic blister pack. This transparent exoskeleton hugs the cardboard on all sides, defying your attempts to jab a scissor under it and begin carving away.

I don't even know why SanDisk bothered. Blister packs are supposed to display the hardware in a shoplifting-resistant manner. But here, you can't look at the device under the plastic, nor can you hang the package from a shelf.

ESPN Mobile's New Assignment

ESPN Mobile, the sports network's cellphone service, which launched with a flurry of publicity at the start of this year, will close by the end of the year, the network announced.

Instead, it will license its content to other wireless carriers to resell: a strategy that makes far more sense. Why would I want to dump my existing phone and price plan, just so I can have an ESPN logo on the phone and some snazzier content that I could otherwise get for free from ESPN's mobile site or from another sports source?

The question this raises: Which so-called MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) will be the next to go? Perhaps Helio?

Bernie Ebbers Goes To Jail

Bernie Ebbers, the CEO who steered WorldCom into a series of increasingly large telecom mergers, then orchestrated one of the biggest accounting frauds in American corporate history, went to jail last week.

He began serving a 25-year sentence at the Oakdale Federal Correctional Institution in rural Louisiana. Even with time off for good behavior, Ebbers will not walk free for 21 years, a term that for a 65-year-old man is likely to become a life sentence.

I wonder how that must feel to whatever remains of the supremely confident -- make that, arrogant -- individual who sat down for a meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors in February of 2000.

Ebbers was in town with Sprint's chief executive at the time, William Esrey, to defend their proposed merger. It was clear who was the alpha male in that relationship; Ebbers led the conversation.

He was in a generous mood with his opinions, holding forth on what would and would not happen with the merger. For instance, declaring that there was "no discussion" about selling off parts of the merged company to satisfy antitrust rules. The money quote in my notes comes from his description of Worldcom's interaction with one government attorney: "It's us trying to teach him telecom."

Contrary to Ebbers' prediction, the Sprint-WorldCom merger never happened; regulators in the U.S. and Europe vetoed the deal. Two years later, the world discovered that WorldCom was cooking the books. Now WorldCom is gone and Bernie Ebbers is just a number: 56022-054.

A Busy Week of Writing

* On Wednesday, the Style section ran my review of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's new memoir.

* Also on Wednesday, I wrote an extra column looking at Hewlett-Packard's misdeeds and what you, the customer might want to do in response.

Back to yesterday's tech section in Sunday Business. In addition to my iPod review, we had these stories:

* In Web Watch, Frank Ahrens looks at how large media companies are marketing their content to mobile phone users.

* Post staff writer Mike Musgrove examines how Bluetooth technology is used with wristwatches to alert you of incoming cellphone calls, even allowing you to push a button to send the call directly to voicemail.

* And in Help File, I discuss one way to clean a computer keyboard of a few years' worth of accumulated crumbs and spills.