As Sascha wrote yesterday, Microsoft dropped by the PC Magazine offices bearing various mobile goodies. As our resident phone and PDA analysts he was justifiably occupied with admiring the new smart phones. And those are pretty cool, but when all the gadgets were laid on the table my eyes went straight to the Toshiba gigabeat S30.

It is about the size of the 5G iPod, but the screen looks even better. With a 2.4-inch QVGA screen and the ability to record video from any TiVo Series 2, it is a nice package. According to Microsoft, it will get as much as six hours of battery life playing video, a claim that we are definitely going to have to test in the Labs. Still, with a competitive pricing 30GB for $299 and 60GB $399 this could be a legitimate challenge to the iPod. It will ship in March.