Dell has been in the news a lot recently -- some of it's been good, but a lot has been bad press for the company. There were many reports of Dell laptop batteries exploding and then there was news that Dell was being sued for misrepresenting T2300E processor as VT-enabled T2300's. That was followed up, however, by the good news that Dell would be using AMD processors in desktops and servers. But after that high came yet another low: Dell announced that it was recalling over 4 million of the aforementioned Sony-manufactured batteries due to a fire risk and that some customers could be waiting up to 75 days to receive a replacement. Now we've gotten word that Dell is throwing in the towel on its own-branded MP3 players.

Dell announced back in February that it was dropping its hard drive based Digital Jukebox (DJ) players due to poor sales and unflinching competition from Apple's iPod music players. Dell’s flash-based DJ Ditty music players are now on the chopping block. The DJ Ditty, which was seen as a competitor to Apple's iPod Shuffle, has vanished from Dell's online store and will no longer be included in the company’s monthly catalog according to Dell forum members. But while Dell may have given its own MP3 players the boot, it's still selling music players from the likes of Sandisk and Creative.

Dell's MP3 players aren't the most stylish products out there and even the attractive pricing wasn't enough to entice buyers. Hopefully, Microsoft will have better luck taking on the likes of Apple, Creative and Sandisk with its Zune lineup.