Two and a half years after Apple introduced the wildly successful iPod, Creative Labs has announced yet another attempt to catch the iPod: the Zen Touch digital music player.

The Amazon.com product description falls all over itself in praising the new media player…

Palm-sized and pocket-friendly, Creative’s Zen Touch digital music player is a treat for your eyes as well as your ears. And–with features like touch-sensitive navigation, 24-hour battery life, light weight (under half a pound with battery), and a staggering 20 GB/10,000 song capacity (64 kbps WMA)–the tiny unit leaves little room for wondering if it’s right for you.

Did you catch that parenthetical remark? In market-speak, “under half a pound” almost invariably means “we engineered the weight down to a few hundredths less than 8 ounces.” Now, I don’t know about you, but every ounce matters for something that is “pocket-friendly” – and therefore likely to be in my pocket.

On the positive side, the tradeoff for the 41% weight penalty over the iPod is a whopping 24-hour battery life. If it even approaches half of that it’s going to collect some devotees.