I bought a Dell when it first came out. When the IPOD mini came out I bought one of those. I havent used the Dell since. I think the sound is better (marginally) on the IPOD, mainly volume-wise. I have both Macs and PCs. I use the Dell software on a PC and the IPOD software on a Mac. With those caveats, I find the iTunes software and iTunes music store (again, on the Mac) to be very, very much superior to the software that comes with the Dell. It is the main reason I dont use the Dell.