One morning in March, 2004, in an anonymous office building off Chancery Lane, I met with a Microsoft executive who had just flown in from the States. He wanted to show me a brand new gadget the technicians back in Redmond were cooking up to dethrone Apple. I believe it was on that drizzly morning that I first heard a Microsoft official utter the phrase "iPod killer".



This veep was certain Microsoft had developed the magic bullet. He described a device that could play digital music files, plus store photos and video. (Microsoft wasn't the first to think of video - that claim goes to Archos and others, but it was still a few months ahead of the video iPod). Then he unveiled the device. It was nearly the size of a shoe. But it had some impressive features. It could store 10,000 songs and 175 hours of video - enticing specs in 2004.

What was this futuristic device? No, not some early version of Zune. It was dubbed "Microsoft Portable Media Center". The idea was Microsoft supplied a hybrid version of its Windows Media Player software to gadget makers like Creative Technology and iRiver.

After that morning, I never saw a Portable Media Center device ever again. Well, not on the street anyhow, owned by a willing consumer.

Portable Media Center was a bad idea at a bad time. It assumed there was a substantial market of consumers who wanted to lug around a clunky gadget that would enable them to spend part of the commute home watching movies or TV shows. It had two fatal flaws, as I saw it: it was not intuitively designed, locking the consumer into Windows Media files, and it was not an iPod. The irony was evident. Microsoft was a powerless outsider in the fastest-growing consumer electronics market. And, unless Apple threw it a bone, allowing Portable Media Center to connect to iTunes, Microsoft would be stuck with a meaningless sliver of the market. The executive summed up his presentation by informing me Microsoft planned to have Portable Media Center ready for the European market in the next seven or eight months. Hopefully, he added.

If Portable Media Center arrived at the wrong time, at least it arrived. Europeans are accustomed to having to wait a few months for new products, but Microsoft this time is saying the Zune, which made its US debut this week, may not be available until Christmas, 2007 in Europe, though you can find one on Amazon at a healthy exchange rate mark-up of £238. But you have to wonder who in their right mind would buy a Zune if there's no online store here to fill it with songs? How can Microsoft possibly hope to topple the iPod if it is ignoring a market that Jupiter Research predicts will top £1 billion within five years?

Even if you could find the Zune, it's doubtful the average European music fan would pay much notice. (Full disclosure: I have not given the Zune a test drive. I live in Europe, and, well, see above paragraph.)

On the plus side, Zune has an FM tuner and wi-fi connectivity to both share protected content with other Zune users and download content directly from the web. In a small way I'm relieved the iPod is not equipped with the latter feature; my iTunes purchases would skyrocket.

And now, for the considerable drawbacks. First, the aesthetics. The device is available in the fetching shades of either white, black or brown and it's been described as not exactly pocket-sized. Of course, the extra girth is to accommodate a larger screen, but I am having flashbacks to the door-stop-sized Portable Media Center player I was shown two years. Admittedly, these points are easily dismissed. Consumers don't care if it's packaged in radioactive material. They just want it to play their music and movies. Simple.

Forgetting for a moment the uninspiring design and lack of units for Europe (small details, I know), the Zune's major flaws appear to be on the, gasp, software side. According to ZDNet , the Zune media player software only plays songs purchased on the Zune store, and it's neither compatible with the most recent version of Windows Media DRM nor the soon-to-launch Vista! Imagine the feel-good PR Microsoft will encounter next year after Zune users first download the new operating system.

But what has me convinced this is going to be a disastrous launch for Microsoft comes down to the obvious. It's not an iPod. What I mean, of course, is that the mass market of music fans justs want a device that will play all their music, regardless of where they purchase it. We don't want to fuss over proprietary DRMs and compression technologies. We are slaves to Apple's AAC-compressed and FairPlay-protected audio files. We are not proud of this fact. I would love to consider a variety of brands for my music and video playing needs, just as I did with compact disc players and DVD players. We all would.

Should Microsoft just give up then? Of course not. But let's not put the consumer through the charade of introducing yet another "iPod killer" that fails to live up the hype. What we consumers want is a "FairPlay killer". My advice: take the money out of the Zune launch, and whatever left-over cash is hanging around from Portable Media Center, and put it somewhere more useful, like in the best lobbyist firm money can buy to force Apple to open up its DRM to everybody. That's a Christmas gift all us gadget heads would like to see.

Bernhard Warner, formerly Reuters' internet correspondent in Europe and senior editor for The Industry Standard Europe, writes about technology, the internet and media industries. He can be reached at techscribe@gmail.com

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