Newest music player

If you have music lovers at your house and are curious about the MP3 player options this holiday season, there's help from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg looks at the new kid on the block - Microsoft's Zune music player and its own music store – and finds some positives over the iPod. Walt likes its "larger screen, the ability to exchange songs with other Zunes wirelessly and a built-in FM radio," but he concludes it "has too many compromises and missing features to be as good a choice as the iPod for most users." The Times's David Pogue likes some things about the Zune too, but his bottom line is "this game is for watching, not playing. It may be quite a while before brown [one of the three colors Zune comes in] is the new white." Meanwhile, apparently in an effort to make sure all the major record labels are represented in Zune's online music store, Microsoft signed an unusual deal with Universal Music Group in which Universal gets "a payment for every Zune player sold" in return for more access to artists and music rights for Zune, the Associated Press reports.