The Cali belongs to my girlfriend - the player has her approval (as long as I do all the music loading for her - for now). When I get the chance I'll let you know where I find the UI a little weak. I understand the myriad of constraints you must have been under with such little real-estate as well as trying to please a very large populace.

One thing, non UI-related, that I really found a PITA were the colour choices on the product. Having the colour change with the capacity might be great for simple visual differentiation, but anyone who wants a 256MB Cali is going to get stuck with a dark-green puke-coloured bobble. The nice shiny yellow is much more attractive. Is the 256MB supposed to be hunter-friendly?

If you're going to the beach or you're a lifeguard, take the yellow Chiba, while knowing you're limited to 128MB (built-in). Likely fine because there will be so many ladies to save in the ocean.

If you're going out to point a gun at things in the woods, take the dark-green camo-Chiba. Then you've also got 256MB of built-in storage to help you pass the time and let you reflect on why you're sitting in the middle o fthe cold dark woods hunting down innocent creatures to begin with.

I do think the unit sounds great, but as mentioned by many others, the headphones are [censored] (hurt ears, short cord, foam pads come off and get lost easily...) Also not a fan of the Cali form-factor - just not comfortable to hold in the hand while controlling - too much of the hand is wasted. It's like you're picking up a delicate tea cup with two or three fingers. Grab it any other way and it involved covering the screen. Not the greatest for holding in your hand while trying to run, IMO.

I haven't used any other flash players for more than a few seconds. And that was ages ago. They were really (really) bad. I just expect a lot more after using things like the empeg and iPod (not anywhere as extensively as the empeg since I don't own my own iPod - waiting on the next killer Rio HD player (must be solid and at least 60GB)).

Chalk up another couple of negatives I just remembered: the "random" repeats songs way too often - I'd prefer a shuffle that never repeats. There's also no support for sorting by tag info (ie. dynamic lists aka soup views) this is a must-have, IMO, even on a 256MB flash player (don't know if it's available on anyone else's though. )

Bruno