Sleek, sounds good, and nice UI, other areas not so good

Well first of all, I want to say I received this free from a friend because they couldn't get it working with the computer for some reason. I don't blame them, I think loading songs, pictures and videos onto the thing is the worst part of this product! Ok now that I've succesfully scared you to not even consider this product, let me go into more details and tell you that it's not ALL BAD =)

What it comes with, standard issue here:
- the player
- carrying pouch
- headphones
- USB cable.

Onto the good:
1) This thing looks GOOD. Nice clear screen, not too small. Customizing the background with an uploaded picture is a great touch
2) The buttons, namely the direct-click interface, is actually nice. What is direct-click? What you do is press the edge of the screen, like a dpad of a joystick, so there are no discreetly marked directional buttons to navigate through the menus. Sounds weird? It actually works pretty well. In addition to the direct-click, there are 4 other buttons, vol+ and vol-, power, and a button to toggle between landscape and portrait display. Oh yeah, there is a separate hold switch too which locks the direct-click. Only amendment to this comment is that it would have been nice to have a dedicated menu and/or select button.
3) Sound quality is really good, through headphones. You have SRS surround, an equalizer, and a few other sound tweaks you can do to tailor the sound to your liking.
4) Menu system is very intuitive, except for the BROWSE submenu (will get to that later). I figured out pretty much everything without even opening the manual. Menu system is cleanly designed and very pleasant to the eye.
5) Has a built in radio and voice/radio recorder. This is something I miss on my iPod. I know you can buy accessories to accomplish it on the iPod, but it's built in on this sucker!
6) Battery life is great. I've only used it for a few hours so far, but the 3 segment battery meter has not even gone down 1 segment, I'm pretty confident that the 28 hours/charge specs are close to real world usage.
7) The sleep and alarm clock features are nice. Not all mp3s player have this.
8) I don't know if this should be considered a good thing, but the built in flash player is pretty neat. You can play some simple games on this thing

Now the BAD
1) Uploading songs, pictures, and videos require 3 different programs! Songs, you use Windows Media Player. This isn't too bad, the WMP UI is pretty good. Pictures and Videos are what bug me. You are forced to convert your standard MPEGs and WMVs to MPEG4 format before uploading them, and not only that, you are forced to drag them manually via Windows Explorer. And for Pictures, it is even worse. You have to convert them to some proprietary formart first and use their own 3rd party program to get them on the thing. My preference would be either make everything standard, like using WMP or Windows Explorer for everything OR completely rely on your own 3rd party program, like iTunes. Don't mix and match.
2) Video is only 15 FPS. Tolerable for a screen this small, but not even close to ideal.
3) No memory expansion! Built in 1GB isn't enough for video, might be enough for audio only.
4) The sound quality may be excellent through headphones but using this product as a line input to an external amplifier is pretty bad, it doesn't have enough juice coming out of it for more than a pair of headphones, even at maximum volume.
5) The Browse menu item is confusing. It's like an alternate method to reach your songs, pictures, and videos. While it's nice to be able to browse through all files are actually on the player, it's pretty useless and could be confusing to some users. You can access everything important through other menu items.
6) I actually have the little docking stand too. While it looks cute and cool, it is ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS. When docked, you can't use any of the buttons on the player, including direct-click, you are forced to use the remote control. And with the screen at 2.2", you can't get very far with the remote before not being able to see the screen. Not only that, the built in speakers of the dock are worthless as well. The only redeeming feature of the dock is the snooze button for when you use the alarm function, and that's only redeeming if you don't already own an alarm clock.
7) When putting the player in the little pouch that came with it, the direct-click is inadvertantly pressed. I suppose that the designers intended for the user to enable the hold switch when putting it in the supplied carry pouch.
8) Doesn't come with a wall plug, you are forced to charge it through USB unless you buy a separate wall plug.
9) WHAT?!?! You can't see how much memory is used or left on the player itself?

Overall, I don't like this product much, like some review said before, it does a lot, but doesn't do anything exteremely well, except for the sound quality through headphones, which I think is very good, especially if you get some nicer headphones. For the MSRP of $250, I wouldn't have even considered buying this thing. But seeing how you can get one for less than $100 on ebay (at the time of this review), I would give it a consideration, only if you plan on using it for music purposes. Video, while tolerable, is only good for very ocassional viewings for the sake of passing time and not for really enjoying a movie or TV show. And for pictures, if it weren't for using a separate 3rd party application, it might have worked out in my book. It's a shame too because the small 262K color screen actually displays pictures very well.