You're not wrong. Apple's decision not to have a flash memory port on the new iPod makes the product much weaker in my opinion. The colour screen and extended battery life are good, but not $100 good. Integrated TV-output is nice (for images) but is already also part of most every digital camera on the market. The iPod's advantage is being able to store more images than your camera's single flash card. But when you have to keep photos in-sync with a PC constantly, that's a bit of a hassle.

Like many others, I'd prefer to see images go onto the iPod from the camera, and THEN onto the computer. You can buy a one of two accessories from Belkin to do this, but they're very "Bulky" (pun intended) for what they do. There are some newer devices coming around that allow connection of a USB camera to a standard external USB hard drive. The small device acts as a master/host controlling the two slave/peripheral devices (as mass storage class connections I assume). So I suppose one of these will also work. But it's just another little dangly bit to lose or break. It would have been a killer blow (to so many other products) to put a CF and SD slot on the iPod.

The funny bit is that they're not hyping this product much. The new U2 special-edition iPod seems to have the lion's share of the limelight.

Bruno