I can see the utility of this. But actually I am mostly interested in being able to use the wheel for ff/rew.
What I would like to see is a mode change like the ipod has, where you would push the select button to switch the wheel's function between volume, ff/rew, and no-op. The third position would be a great addition for me - it would prevent accidental volume changes or ff/rew that happen so easily with this scroll wheel, but still allow manual skip between tracks (so I could put the player in my pocket and quickly reach in to skip a song I didn't want to hear, or pause, but not change volume accidentally).