I'm hoping the price goes down considerably on the smaller units. $200 for 10 gB is about my indifference point.

You missed the point - that product is the same size as a flash player, but with twelves times more storage. If you put the biggest SD card you can get into a flash model you'd still only have a third as much storage and it would have cost two to three times more than the miniature hard disk model.

You're paying for the form factor. If you don't mind the player being a bit bigger then Pearl clearly offers more bang per buck. Personally I can think of applications for both of them.

Rob