I haven't seen the silver model in real life, but my brother has the black one, 2 gig version, and it's actually pretty slick. It's a little thicker than the Nano, but not thick enough to bulge in your pocket, and it actually feels sturdy and well-built (unlike the Nano which feels like it will snap in half if you sit with it in your pocket. What else does the thickness get you? Over 30 hours of battery-life! The interface and controls take a little getting used to, but the menu layout is pretty good.

Anyone without iPrejudice should love this player. It's definitely a decent WMAlternative to the Nano.

I don't really get the push for solid state laptops. In MP3 players that you take jogging it makes sense, but what do you people do with your laptops that has you so paranoid about HD crashes?

Newer 2.5", 1.8" and 1" drives are virtually shock-free, and they're an order of magnitude cheaper than flash. Compare the 60 gig iPod to the 4 gig Nano. Per gigabyte, the Nano is 10 times more expensive.

Magnetic storage (disk drive) technology is almost a century old, and much more mature than flash. It will be at least a decade before flash is price competitive with hard drives. So, for my portable storage needs, I'd rather have a 160 gig Seagate HD than 4 gigs of Samsung flash in my laptop. Actually, I'm fine with 40 gigs in my laptop, and that only cost me $50, which would only buy me 1 gig of flash.

Flash is the future... the distant future.

"If the concept was tidied up so sound, control, and power went through USB, it could be a hit."
This product isn't intended to be a hit. Analog-anything appeals to people with tons of money to burn, vintage fan-boys, and professionals. In pro-studios you find analog audio interconnections (because there's lots of analog effects still in use, and A/D conversion is best left to specialized devices, often made by Apogee, etc), and MIDI automation control.
Anyone who would find use for USB on a box like this couldn't afford it/wouldn't buy it. A plug-in (there's lots of great VSTs out there) would cost thousands less. Native Instruments makes good stuff, and Reason comes with a few modules that would approximate the functionality of these boxes. Each will cost you less than $300, but if you're into music production at all you probably already have Reason and some NI-plugins. If you don't, you should.

Is the RSS feed working? I'm using uTorrent, and I haven't received anything since before CES (Episode 57 was the last.)

Yeah, I actually couldn't agree more. Why would I pay $400+ to read on this little device, when the same amount will get me a PDA, Zen Vision, or even a totally bargain basement laptop that will do far more than this will. e-Ink could be great someday, especially if they make it color. This device is useless.