Dell buys Zing: smart move

Dell has acquired Zing maker of the Sansa Connect (reviewed by Endgadget). I think this is great news for all of us who while loving Apple products believe that time has come to have some real competition in the music playing arena. To me (and I know that I am still one of the few people out there who believe this) it is much better to walk around with a Sansa Connect than with an iPod. Why doesn´t the iPod have wifi connectivity is something that I can´t understand. And what´s worse, the iPhone has great WiFi connectivity but it cannot be used to stream or add new music. This is exactly where the Sansa Connect fits in. It is a tiny, elegant device that allows you to discover, share and play music wherever there is WiFi and it even stores new songs for you so when you are outside WiFi coverage you can still have fun. And the Yahoo Music version of the Sansa Connect is a start. I can see the Sansas being able to play videos from any platforms, work with Last.fm (my favorite online music community), Pandora, and any other online, video music service. As far as Dell is concerned I think acquiring Zing is smart because now that Michael Dell is back at the helm what Dell needs are novel products with great user interfaces. Zing is not just the Sansa. Zing is a team led by Tim Bucher, formerly at Next and Apple who is to great gadgets what Janus Friis (designer of Kazaa, Skype and Joost) is to great user interfaces. I would recommend that Tim´s talent is used not only to improve the Sansa but to help out accross the board in Dell´s design strategy.