The iPod Touch is a revolution in media player design. It's sleek, it's sexy and it's incredibly tactile. It oozes class on every level. The multi-touch initerface is a revelation: it's quick, it's intuitive and it looks totally awesome. The screen's fantastic, and it's incredibly thin. It also has WiFi and the best mobile web browser on the planet.

In fact there's very little to criticise about the player itself... apart from the fact, perhaps, that Apple chose not to integrate a flash memory slot (even microSD would have done), so what you buy is what you're stuck with in terms of capacity.

When it comes to the software though, I have so many gripes I don't know where to start. First of all, there's no bundled software, so before you can use your shiny new player you have to go and download iTunes. Fine now I have broadband, but when I reviewed the Touch I was still on dialup. Ouch!

Next, by forcing me to use iTunes, Apple made me essentially duplicate my entire media collection into their proprietary software before I could instal it on the player... it's ludicrous. Vendor tie-in at it's very, very worst. Besides, I don't like iTunes, and would rather not use it.

Still, if you want to use an iPod you're stuck with it.

The iPod Touch is outstanding... five stars -- but iTunes sucks, and the fact I'm forced to use it drags it down to three.