Go for a Creative product.
I skipped on the ipod. A guy at my workplace bought one and it crashed. He couldn't do a hard reset of it (cycle the power by taking the batteries out), because the damn thing didn't open. We had a room full of extra smart people and we couldn't figure out how to get the ipod to open up without damaging it. This guy traded that one in for another one, and had the same problem. Then he took it back, and asked me what I use. I told him a Creative Jukebox Zen Xtra. It's nice, easy to use, looks good, and actually does what you want it to.
Then another guy that sits in the same cube as me got an ipod nano. it's pretty cool. Solid state harddisk, screen with enough resolution to look at pictures or play video, and it's 7 M&Ms long by 3 M&Ms wide by about 1/2 an M&M thick.
It's cool, but I still think he paid too much.
