So I have finally succumbed to the urge to get an MP3 player and got myself an iRiverH320. I realise I've been a bit behind the curve here but wow, what a great toy! One of the reviews summarised it as a great MP3 player for people who've chosen the PC over the Mac: lacking in design finesse and with instructions and controls that are far from intuitive, but packed with power and features. That's about right, I'd say. Monster hard drive, high quality voice recording (useful to me for possible future podcasting efforts) and generally lots of whizzy things to tweak. Oh and the music sounds great too.

Of course, it has immediately given me my first frustrating brush with the DRM nazis fraternity. It won't play WMA files ripped from CD. It appears the EU version is especially obstinate on this point. So I poked around in google, downloaded a piece of Freeware called FreeRIP to create .ogg files instead. I hadn't heard of ogg files yesterday, and today they're installed and working a treat. Not a solution to downloaded music, I gather, but hey it works for me.

So I was foot-tapping my way round Marks & Spencer this afternoon to a wildly shuffling collection of hits. Not a pretty sight I'm sure, but it sounded great on the inside.