The 2nd Beta version of IE 8 is now out and about, and I have to say, it's pretty quick.  All this time that IE 7 has been "slow", it's now pretty nippy.  Not only that, but it is now much more standards compliant than its almost 3-year-old predecessor.

So what will happen to Firefox now?  Their only way of getting people to download it is by telling them it's faster and more secure than Internet Explorer.  But, not any more.  It's about the same.  Plus, the new Firefox (v3.0) takes forever to start up.  I can start IE8 and get to my homepage before FF3 even shows up on the taskbar.

Anyway, enough with that.  I've updated (give us a sec...) the poll to reflect this post, so get voting :).

Though I think the name PMP (Portable Multimedia Player) would suit it more, as I have no MP3s on it (such a primitive format).

Yes, almost 2 years to the day, I've replaced my aging brick, the Creative Zen Vision:M, with the brand new Zen X-Fi.  I only got the 16GB model because I "only" have 6.8GB of music, and I seriously doubt that I'll need more than 16GB in the next 2-3 years...

The 16GB model (as well as the 32GB) has WiFi built in.  But, unlike the iPods which seem to have forgotten what they're for, the Zen X-Fi uses the wireless connectivity for media things, such as streaming songs from a media server at home, or from Creative's online servers which dish out podcasts.  Most of these podcasts seem to be Australian radio shows, for some reason, but they are pretty funny (I've only listened to the 'comedy' section so far), so I have no problem with it.

As for X-Fi, or 'Xtreme Fidelity', combined with the supplied earphones (which cost 100Fr by themselves - almost a third of the total cost of the player!) the sound quality is top knotch (is there a K ?).  The battery will last 35 hours playing music - roughly 35 times the batterly life boasted by today's most "innovative" gadget, the iPhone!)

Creative claim that the player is credit card sized, though I've never seen a credit card that's 13mm thick.  //Sarcasm off.

I've also made a new poll to reflect this post.  Jesus out.