An IT publication that's willing to call manufacturers on "a fair amount of frankly rather pointless subsidiary functionality"? I applaud you.

It's not just Creative that are going this way, Archos now seem to be buying into the pointless functionality mindset too.

What it does mean is there are some great deals to be had on the "old" models which do exactly what you want them to do at a great price. You can get the 32gig Zen for well under £150 and an Archos 605 for under £100.

The bonus with an older model, aside from the price, is a nice stable and mature firmware too. It's a win/win.

I've bought Creative in the past, but I wont be touching this one. Dont they do any surveys to see what their customers actually want, as opposed to the wet dreams of their marketing munchkins? Its a music/video player, thats ALL I want it to do...

you'd be better off with an archos, and yes i realise you have to buy the plugins separately for wifi and full video support, but its worth it

the creative zen that is in my pocket right now. Except they couldn't afford to paint the whole think one colour and made the buttons worse.

What a pile of cack.

Come on Creative I am losing hope faster than the Republican party.

What they should be doing is working on integrating the XML parser with Last.fm's scrobbler that is a better use of their time.

Why is it only Apple that understand this?

and see if the rumoured new iPod Touch comes out with lower pricing !

The touch is really very nice and a joy to use. I picked an almost new 16Gig one up on eBay for £155 and combine it with a samsung blackjack smartphone for wifi->3g tethering. (hint: posted this from it 8-)

Presumably the "more" part of "more is less" refers to the price of Apple products?

No more Zens for me - I can't lug my laptop to every place I need to recharge mine, especially on holiday with all those language podcasts on it. USB charging from PC only is frankly a gross stupidity

I have a Creative Labs Zen Vision:M 30GB, which for the time was a fantastic player and still is, in fact.

I was waiting with bated breath for the replacement from Creative, hoping for something along the lines of a Zen Vision W 60GB with touch screen and WiFi, but it seems that this is not to be.

The Zen XiFi is a huge step back with a small screen, no more capacity (unless you add badly integrated SD cards) and tons of bloat...

I am now looking at the Archos range, as I do not want to go down the Apple route and get tied into iTunes.

.. with my old and trusted iRiver Clix2. Still, new Audible compatible device will do good to the market

It seems folk are continually experimenting with even worse ways of entering text. Bravo!

It's not a firmware bug, it's the album. My guess is the X-fi prefers Hatebreed or Machine Head!

The MuVo was my first MP3 player - it sounds like they have NOT come very far since then. True, the MuVo lacks the nice big screen, but it also doesn't pretend to be ANYthing it's not.

And at least the MuVo can be powered off cheap Ni-MH or Ni-Cad batteries.

for my missus, as she needed a device with recording ability for her pesky masters degree lectures.

I've got an iPod touch and have to say that although the touch is a far more pleasant experience to use, the sound quality from the X-Fi is superior in everyway. I used Shure E310 headphones, not the standard kit ones with either the creative offering or the touch and it really is that much better.

Shame the touch doesn't have a mic, otherwise I'd give her that and keep the x-fi for myself :)

And for those of you complaining about USB only charging.....iPods are the same, unless you had an old generation iPod that came with a seperate plug in charger, your also stuck with USB only charging or have to buy a seperate charger....so whats the differance (except that a mini usb charger is cheaper to buy than an apple one)

That it was also much better value than in UK/US, cost me 170 quid ($399 SGD) with a free silicon case, for the 32GB model :)