Whiz, there are a lot of things to read on your links so it may take me some time to resolve this one. One thing stands out though and that is the number of people on those forums who have issues with the ishuffle players.
The people in the Apple shop here are starting to get up my nose.
The large file size of the latest ipod updater software is too large for my dialup connection to handle, so reseting the unit is nigh on impossible. I dont know where to go from here, although I will persist for a while on those links.