Let me begin by saying that, if I were buying it, I'd never buy an iPod, the Shuffle variety especially. I got mine for 'free'. Having said that, let me begin this 'review'.

iPod Shuffle manages to look both cheap and elegant at the same time. It doesn't have a screen, so you can't check what's playing. You can load it only using the iTunes software, which will happily take over your computer (well, only file associations, but it doesn't stop to consider the possibility that you might actually not want to use it as your default music player) if you let it. And the hang-it-around-your-neck-cord-thingie (lanyard) attaches to it in a rather easily detachable way (it clicks onto the USB connector), so you might not want to use it if you plan on moving vigorously. And it charges it's lithium-ion battery through a USB port, so you either have to have a powered computer nearby after 12 hours of music-listening, or buy one of the hideously expensive accessories which will allow you to charge it from other sources.

Onto the good things... It's small and light, the sound quality is good, iTunes isn't as evil as I feared and lets you fill the thing with randomly chosen songs from your library if you don't feel like choosing them yourself, it has a Li-ion battery which charges from a USB port (yup, double-edged, this one), and it'll get me through my trip to (and from) Manchester this June. I'll just have to create a playlist of my favourite songs from which iTunes will fill it - I don't feel like being totally randomly shuffled all the time.

It can't read my mind. It can't read my moods. I'll load it up and put it on, but it won't take me anywhere. No matter what the Apple marketing people say.