The 40GB iPod weighs 15g more than its slightly lighter brother, the 20GB, but those extra grams are pure muscle, carrying, as they do, space for thousands more tracks. If you so wish, the 40GB iPod can carry a staggering 10,000 tunes or, say 10GB of data files and still have 50% more room to spare for MP3 and music than the 20GB has.

But boy are these iPods fast. Our web designer regularly copies his entire 300MB inbox on his PC in less than 30 seconds. That's 10MB per second data transfer speed – that's about as fast as his hard disk can actually read it.

The 40GB iPod comes with a rather dinky little 'dock' that provides synchronizing via Firewire or USB2.0 (cables provided) and audio line out, for connection to your stereo system or to powered speakers. Your iPod can also recline becomingly in its dock, while charging itself up and comes with all the other goodies too: AC adapter, earbud headphones, Firewire cable and a PC Firewire adapter. Then there is that hassle-free iPod functionality:

So for those of you with a truly massive CD collection as well as a bloated personal data file on your PC, the slim-line 40GB iPod solution is only a bid away.