Music makes almost any activity more pleasant, from travel to jogging to shopping.

Happily, technological advances mean personal stereos are more portable and Creative's MuVo is truly minute - it's the size of a cigarette lighter.

The player is the white part, which detaches and plugs directly into a USB port.

It's essentially just a USB storage device, like those in our classified section, except it can play WMA or MP3 music files, as well as simply storing data.

Depending on the sound quality used, you can store up to two hours of music of acceptable quality.

In use, the one AAA battery that powers MuVo lasted more than 10 hours and the volume level was sufficient to drown out London Underground's background noise.

If you have Windows Me or XP, using MuVo is easier than falling off a very slippery log. You plug it in, Windows recognises it as an external disk and you just drag and drop music files onto it.

With Windows 98, MuVo must be formatted using the supplied CD the first time it is plugged in.

However, small isn't always beautiful. Tiny personal music machines without screens such as MuVo have disadvantages - you cannot see details of the track that is playing, for example.

Also, using MuVo straight out of the box, you can only use 60.4MB of its storage space and it only plays tracks in the order they were transferred.

Transferring music files inside folders to MuVo is a mistake too, as it won't look inside the folders for music and will not play those files, something not made clear in the manual.

One failing we couldn't understand was that MuVo has no clip to attach it to the outside of clothing, so you have to delve into pockets to adjust it, often pressing a button by accident because you cannot lock them.

You can hang it around your neck, though.

Finally, sound reproduction from its earphones was decidedly average, so investing in better ones is a must.

With a 256MB version rumoured next spring, we wonder whether the 64MB MuVo has the capacity or the talent to attract buyers.

DETAILS
Price: £100

Contact: Creative - no UK number
www.europe.creative.com