Quote: ** Okay, lack of screen also cheapened the construction price and breakage issues too. It also reduced the time it took to develop it and allows apple to sell it cheaper than everyone else. I think the main thrust of the unit is to drive down the price of a lot of other...

I could accept the ipod shuffle if it had gapless playback - does it, and do any of the flash players have gapless playback?

I've been looking for a long time, and I think I'll get some kind of an iRiver Flash player, but I want to know if they are a pain to use. The display looks tiny - like it can't much of any information about the track being played or what mode you are in. I also want to know if the joystick...

Thanks to everyone for the responses - Based on the above, I need to learn some more about the different formats (wav, ogg, aac, etc.) and which ones are "lossy" and "lossless" - and which ones are supported by different players. Rather than posting a new thread, I'm sure something like...

I'm thinking about getting a flash mp3 player, but I want to be able to make my own mixes, with cross faded songes, and I want to be able to control the length of the pause between songs track by track (so I can get the right "feel" between songs). Do any of the flash mp3 players allow this...