and it confirmed why I have never done so before and will not do so again.

I’ve not paid for any music downloads until today. I read in Stuff magazine that Tescos (yes Tescos) now have their own music download store; this seemed an amazing diversification for a supermarket chain but what really caught my eye was that the downloads are 192Kbps WMA files – my chosen music format.

So I thought I’d have a look tonight.

The store itself is fairly unremarkable and in fact is rather unattractive. However, I saw that they have the new Chemical Brothers single Galvanise available and at only 79 pence I thought I’d make my first music download purchase.

The purchase itself went well, I downloaded the file without any problems and Windows Media Player 10 played the track with no problems at all.

However, I am unable to transfer the track to my Rio Karma.

Rio Music Manager says that my Rio is no longer connected. WMP can’t see my Rio at all for some reason – although has in the past. RioRad from Red Chair software was able to transfer the track but now my Karma cannot play it.

Either I am doing something wrong or downloaded music with the associated DRM sucks even more than I thought.

Actually the device itself is almost full with just over 1Gb of free space.

For me the joy of a high capacity music player is that I can have my entire music collection with me at all times. So I don’t want to manage that collection; deciding what will and won’t be loaded onto the player – you can guarantee the day I really fancy listening Frank Black for example I’ll have not transferred him across.

So I’ve been pondering a new 40Gb player and tonight made my decision – the Creative Zen Touch 40Gb is the new player for me. Only problem being it doesn’t appear to be available in the UK yet.

The Zen Touch is Creative’s latest player and is rather influenced by a certain other MP3 player on the market.

I was next to a chap on the train tonight with the current 20Gb model and got talking to him about it and had a play.

I thought that the Zen Touch was going to be a large player like the older Zen players but it is very compact; slightly thicker than an iPod but not as tall. I personally found the proportions more pleasing.

The build quality is excellent with the back being aluminium and the front a mix of metal and plastic. The screen is very good and the user interface also good.

The ‘touch’ strip works very well and being made by Creative it sounds great (unlike the iPod).

So Creative hurry up and bring the 40Gb version into the UK.