The trend towards DRM-free music seems to be giving Dell the notion that the market’s ready for another digital music player. They tried to sell MP3 players five years ago, but got washed away in the Apple iPod tsunami and gave up in 2006. There’s a whiff of “me too” about anybody trying to make portable music players now; Apple’s devices are so ubiquitous that people call any such device “an iPod” at this point. But Dell’s hoping that by hiring an ex-Apple executive to oversee the  making of an inexpensive