Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As the owner, for four years, of a Creative Vision M, I decided it was time to get something new. The iPod Touch seemed to be the answer. What I liked about it is that it is smaller and and has the touch screen interface. After I got it home I realized my mistake. The Touch will not even turn on until you install iTunes on your computer and register the device. You must first agree to an agreement that basically says that apple makes no warranty whatsoever. As other people have pointed out, there are no instructions included, and the web page they direct you to does not exist. This is the latest, and most expensive model, and not something outdated, and the web page they direct you to is non-existent. After that it becomes a real problem to transfer music and other stuff to the iPod. The only way to do this is with iTunes. With the Creative Zen Vision M I only had to plug it into a USB port and the device would show up in Windows Explorer, and I could drag music and videos and anything else to the player. With the iPod Touch it is a completely confusing and non-intuitive process. There is no way to move files directly to the Touch. Everything must first be imported into iTunes, which means that all MP3s, for example, have to be copied by iTunes into its own local folder. This is a real problem for me because my music library resides on an external hard disc, and I have no room on my C: drive. Nevertheless iTunes will not copy music directly from my external drive to the Touch. It first must copy it to my C: drive, which has no available space. I have searched for and tried third party software to replace iTunes, but nothing works. It seems that Apple continually updates the software on the iPod Touch and the iPhone to block any attempts to not use iTunes. And aside from the above mentioned problems with iTunes, what a terrible piece of software. It is completely opaque and non-intuitive. I used to be tempted to buy an apple computer because of hearing that the software is easy to use, but, if iTunes is an example of Apple software, then I believe Windows software is much better. If you don't already have a lot of MP3s, and you are prepared to be locked into the Apple format and the Apple way of doing things, than this device may work for you. But if you value flexibility and want to actually own your device and use it the way you want to, I think there may be better choices. I think it is a shame that such a nice piece of hardware is so crippled by the required software so as to ruin its functionality.