The Dell DJ 30 is an excellent choice for those who simply want to store and play their large collection of music.  Although the product has basic functionality, the DJ will satisfy most users because it simply gets the job done while being priced below Apple's iPod. 
 

The DJ is very similar in size to the iPod.  What differs is the design.  The DJ is surrounded with an aluminium casing that even covers the entire back.  Because of this aluminium casing, you are unable to replace the hard drive or the battery yourself if the unit ever dies.

The DJ chose a different approach for button style and placement.  At the center is a scroll wheel which when rolled, will have a notched feel.  There are buttons both on the left and right of the scroll wheel.

Below the scroll wheel are the rewind, play/pause, and fast/forward buttons which are evenly placed apart.

The back of the product has nothing except the small labelling which identifies the product.  If you are familiar with Dell, this product also has a service tag which allows you to easily find support for your product if something is wrong or if you would like to find more information about the product.  This goes hand-in-hand with Dell's reputation for excellent customer support.
 

The bottom of the player only has a single port which is used to charge and/or transfer your music to the player.  The player can be connected directly either by the provided cable or through the provided dock which will be mentioned next.

Behind the dock, there are connectors to allow you plug in AC power and the USB cable.  There is also a Line Out port which comes in handy if you wish to connect the dock to an external device or speakers to listen to the music while the player is in the dock.

Before connecting the player to the computer, it is important to install the software and drivers on the provided CD first.  The CD contains the necessary drivers for the player to be recognized in Windows.  You can synchronize your music files with the player with the included MusicMatch Jukebox 10 software or through Windows Media Player.  I used Windows Media Player to transfer the files.  You can just drag and drop the music files into the synchronize list so that is copied onto the player.
 

When the screen is not lit, I found the screen to be of adequate size.  You are able to see the menus and text easily.  I never did feel that the screen was too small or too large.  A small thing I did notice with the screen is that when I looked at the screen at a slight angle, I could see some parts of the screen darker than others.  I'm not certain if this is apparent in other DJ's as well, but I didn't notice this at all on the iPod.  This didn't affect the usability of the player at all, it might mean how the build quality of the screen might not have been flawless as expected.
 

If you have an extremely large collection of songs on the player, navigating through the list can be tiresome with just the scroll wheel.  To help makeup for this small shortcoming, you can easily select the letter of the artist that you want to navigate through.  Therefore, you will only need to select from about 26 letters, as opposed to selecting the song from thousands.  This still doesn't quite help if you are just browsing through your music collection on the player not knowing what you want to hear exactly. 
 

At the top left of the screen, the player shows the battery life.  An icon containing three bars is shown.  I think that a better battery indicator could have been used because most people will think of three bars as full, two bars around the half-way point, and one bar as low battery.  The problem with this is that considering that this player has a 12 hour battery life, a low battery can mean as much as 4-5 hours left of playback time which is a bit deceiving.  As far as battery life is concerned, I was able to an average of about 10 hours of battery life which is not too bad.  It was even less when I first received the player and fiddled with the buttons a lot during playback.  The battery life was better when I fiddled less with the buttons while listening to the music.

The sound quality of the player is generally good.  Unless doing a direct listening comparison with the iPod, most people will not notice the difference in sound quality even though it is worse in the DJ.  When I mean by 'worse', it is only a very slight difference.  Unless you have a trained listening ear, you will probably not be able to notice the difference.  Overall, the sound quality was good and met my expectations for a player such as this.  I tried using this player with the Sennheiser HD497 as well as the AKG k301 XTRA (both headphones are similar in sound quality) and the music was good.

This player is capable of playing both constant and variable bit MP3's as well as WMA file formats. 
 

The player fits nice and snug in the case.  Although the sides are partially exposed as well as the top, I'm fairly sure that the player will still be safe from most bumps and scrapes that the case endures.  When the player is in the case, the player is generally not really usable.  It is expected that the user will take the player out from the case whenever they want to use the player.
 

The Dell DJ is a simple hard-drive based player that will surely be a choice for those who can't quite afford or an iPod or wants to save a bit of money.  In addition, this player offers some versatility with the support of the WMA file format. 

The DJ retails for $299, but Dell now sells this as low as $230 which is as much as (or greater than) $100 less than an iPod with the same capacity.  Also, considering that Dell does have coupons if you know where to get one or can find one on the net, it makes this player an even greater bargain.  Although this player doesn't have any advanced features that might be seen on other competing hard-drive based players, this is a great product for those who simply want to listen to their large collection of music on this player.