Let’s look at the facts. Storage space: iPod Minis store either 4 or 6 GB of music depending on the model. A PDA such as the aforementioned Toshiba Pocket PC E740 allows for an 8 GB Compact Flash memory card and even an additional 1 GB SD memory card for a total of 9 GB of music storage. What’s more, you can buy additional memory cards and swap them at will for potentially unlimited storage space. With the iPod, you’re stuck with what you’ve got. Memory cards are also getting larger and larger storage capacities thanks to the demands of the digital photography market. By the time this reaches print, newer 16 GB Compact Flash and 2 GB SD cards may be on the market. With the iPod mini? Well, you’d have to buy a new iPod mini. What’s more is that the iPod’s memory is not the same as the memory you find in phones, cameras and PDAs. It’s not the robust electronic chip kind you can drive a truck over and have survive. It’s the spinning, battery-draining, don’t drop it or you’ll be sorry kind you find in fragile laptops. Yes boys and girls, the iPod mini uses a hard drive. Be careful around magnets.

But, I hear you say, the iPod mini is so easy to use with their clickwheel everything. Well, I agree. No one can ever accuse the Pocket PC’s Windows Media Player of being beautiful or elegant. That’s why you’ll be happy to know you can download software such as uPod that makes use of that great big colour screen to emulate the iPod’s interface. That’s right, a clickwheel right on your PocketPC.

Another advantage of the PDA is that it makes life easier if you ever want to do something other than listen to music. For example, a lot of iPod owners like copying computer files onto their players to transport to another computer. However, unlike PDAs, USB memory key chains and portable hard drives, the iPod imposes many rules, restrictions and annoyances. For example, let’s say you copied some songs you ripped from a CD you bought to listen to on your iPod and then wanted to transfer them to your laptop. Guess what – you can’t. Apple has deliberately designed the iPod so that you can’t transfer music from it. With the Pocket PC? Of course you can. This is something the iPod don’t advertise in large print on its box. Another problem is that you have to partition the iPod memory between its music area and the part that allows you to transfer files. So if you have a 6 GB iPod and you guessed that you would use 5 GB for music and 1 GB for file storage, then you’ll be stuck the next time you find you want to transfer a 2 GB file – even if your iPod is empty. The PocketPC? No such annoying restrictions – if you have the space – you can use it.