It is quite interesting to see how Microsoft's become so large that it's starting to fragment into mutually incompatible pieces.

You can spot some of this in the Live/MSN dichotomy but nowhere is it more apparent than Microsoft's new media player, the Zune.

Microsoft has already made forays into the mobile music market, with the Playforsure DRM stuff, the MSN Music Store and Urge offerings. Zune isn't compatible with any of them.

Where it gets comical though is that Zune isn't even compatible with Windows Vista currently. The plan is that it will be by end of January when Vista launches, but it's not a good look for Microsoft.

Speaking of Vista, I've taken the plunge and started using it on a daily basis now. Still on RC2 but should upgrade to RTM soon - no, not Zune. Little bit disappointed in the fit and finish of RC2 actually. The OS itself is rock-solid and runs fast, but I get a lot of application crashes. Most seem to happen when Vista goes to sleep and it affects parts of the OS like IE7.

IE7 in Vista is also curiously different from IE7 in XP. Some sites don't render right in Vista, but look fine in XP - Google Gmail is one. In fact, I'm having a few problems using Movable Type (the blogging engine that PC World uses) in Vista IE7, which doesn't like "scriptable windows". Oh well, Firefox 2.0 runs fine on Vista, ditto Opera 9, so I'm not too fussed.