I recently got my hands on a 3rd generation 15 Gb iPod, thanks to my wife buying me one as a birthday present. Not having access to a Mac (at the time; this has all changed since I wrote this post originally) meant it would have to be connected to a Windows box, which hasn't been an easy path to follow.

I wanted to try out the iTunes Music Store (iTMS), which meant installing and managing the iPod through iTunes, which is only available for the Mac or for Windows, which meant I was restricted on my choice of hardware, most of which runs some form of Linux or BSD distribution.

As far as Windows machines were concerned I had a choice of either a desktop machine, a Dell Dimension 8200, running Windows XP Professional SP1, with a 2.2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor and 512 Mb of RAM or a laptop, a Dell Latitude D600, running Windows XP Professional SP1, with a 1.6 Mhz Intel Pentium processor and 512 Mb of RAM.

On the back cover of last weeks Guardian Guide magazine is an advert for the latest book by John Grisham. Now I don't have any particular axe to grind where Mr Grisham is concerned; he's not my favourite of authors nor is his legal thriller genre one which I read that much of.

My gripe here is with the advert itself which, to my mind, contains not one, but two oxymorons.