Here is why the French do it better! There is no doubt Zune 2 is a worthy iPod rival, but hey, there are not many to know that the Zune itself has found its rival on the market, namely the cool French version known as the Artamys PMP.

Artamys reveals a neat simple design line, as well as some cool abstract features to make some turn their heads. But, even if it wants to compete with the mighty Zune, the Artamyss R-RM 850 PMP has also got its inspiration from some heavy names in the industry, such as LG. It's enough to look at its touch-sensitive buttons to get the main idea. Still, besides that, the portable media player comes equipped with a 2.8 inch 320 x 240 pixels TFT screen and a bunch of capabilities that would make some jealous.

The PMP can play lots of file formats such as AVI, XVID, WMV, RM, RMVB, DAT, FLV, MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, APE, JPG, BMP and GIF, which basically means it can face with both video and audio formats, as well as photo playback options. In addition, this baby is also said to be able to turn into an e-Book reader, supporting Txt files.

The extra specs are quite poor, since they only offer a common FM tuner, which is pretty much nothing compared to some cool gaming or video playback features it could have featured. For the file transfer management, the player is using the USB 2.0 interface, while the battery was rated to last up to 15 hours of music files playback and only 4 hours of watching video media content.

Hey, the price tag is very competitive, as the French Zune is said to retail somewhere around 146 bucks a piece! Tr�s bien, Artamys! Keep up the good work!