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Thanks for the excellent review, Julie. I really enjoy your photos...the glossed-up pics on the Apple site really aren't an accurate representation.

You're absolutely right on about the heft and build-quality of the newest iPod. I've held one in my hand and all my skepticism and disdain melted instantly - this IS an object of desire, an engineering marvel...almost jewel-like. Until one actually has a first-hand, tactile experience, you cannot emphasize enough about this point.

When iPod hits Target again in July, I think I'll finally give in to temptation.

The reason why Windows users don't get as much space on the iPod is because of the filesystem choice. The iPod typically uses HFS+ (the standard Mac filesystem; not very much compatible with anything else), and original iPod-on-Windows solutions would typically work with HFS+-on-Windows software to get things running.

When Apple decided to support Windows themselves, they decided against this, and instead set up the iPod so it could be formatted with the Win9x FAT32 filesystem instead, which is almost as universal as hydrogen but not as efficent as HFS+. So that's why there's a size discrepancy.

(for the record, nice review, though there's absolutely no chance of my getting an iPod anytime soon as I encoded my CD collection in Ogg Vorbis ages ago and I'm not going to MP3; I can hear the difference and it drives me nuts. :) )

Thanks for a good review, as always. One correction: you can very easily use Audible.com books with the new iPods and Windows. I do it all the time. You can either get the latest version of the Audible Manager software from the audible.com folks, and "activate" your iPod, or you can simply load audible books with EphPod. Works slick.

For the time being, bookmarks and your current listening point in an audible book do not survive connections to the PC, but everything else works well. And you can very quickly zoom to the correct hour/minute on an audible book on the iPod as long as you remember your place.

Lately, I have been looking into a digital audio device to play back sporting events and programs recorded from the radio. I tried downloading a lacrosse game to my MPIO DMK MP3 player. The download worked fine, but the DMK does not have a resume function so when the player powered down I would lose my place in a four hour long recording. Also, the toggle that moves through the tracks is very easy to activate so I could easily lose my place by accident.

I thought about the PoGo Radio Your Way player, but I was told that it doesn't have auto resume! I can't believe a player geared for radio programs would not have this feature.

I know that there are a number of players with auto resume, but my concern here is accidently moving to the next track while fast forwarding through commercials and halftimes. I imagine that your place would then be lost. I have four TiVos so I know how digitally recorded programs should be handled. When you switch from one program to another, it should remember your place in each of the programs. This is how TiVo works. If the players don't have this feature, then they should at least make it more difficult to accidentally change tracks.

Does the ipod have a hold button? Do you think that the ipod would have a high chance of losing its place in a long audio program? You have already mentioned that the buttons can be pushed very easily. This may rule it out for one of my intended uses.

Sorry about the long winded post.

Axel