Let them listen to cake: Toshiba Gigabeat P-series

Someone in Toshiba's design team clearly stared at a Battenberg one minute too long. It's especially odd given that Japan is not renowned for its love of this German cake -- the one made of pink and yellow squares of sponge, stuck together with apricot jam and wrapped in marzipan.

The cake was first baked to celebrate the marriage of Prince Louis Battenberg to Princess Victoria of Hesse-Darmstadt, and is thought to honour the four German princes who shared the Battenberg name. Toshiba don't claim to have such romantically frivolous intentions for their Battenberg-inspired MP3 player. In fact, the new 32 by 82 by 13mm Gigabeat P seems to say quite plainly, "I am looking for iPod nano and I intend to kill him."

At 50g, with a 28mm (1.1-inch) OLED screen, the new Gigabeat can show pictures on its tiny display and comes in 512MB and 1GB versions. As other manufacturers have learnt, Toshiba's players will live or die on the strength of the bundled software. We'll have to wait until early next year before these make their way across the choppy seas from Tokyo. -CS