Well, I have given up on my iPod..
The first one I got was DOA (the screen worked for ten minutes then died).
The second one I got crashed and wouldn't restart. It did this just after a year, so I ended up paying £80 to get it repaired. It already had a loose headphone socket, but this didn't bother me, and it would have cost another £30 to repair, so I didn't bother.
Now, a few months after the repair (but again, just outside the warranty), the firewire connection died. This was OK, and it could still attach via USB. Then, this week, I charged it (fully) on Sunday night, By Monday night, the battery was empty, so, figuring I had left it on overnight or something, I charged it again. I got two hours use on Tuesday before it registered the battery was nearly empty.
So, with the option of spending another £150 (£80 for a logic board, £40 for a battery and £30 for new headphone socket) on repairs to the iPod that might last a few months, or spending £200 on a new player, I have now bought myself one of
these. Even though I currently only have MP3s on it (I am currently re-encoding my CDs as Atrac files), and only have the supplied earphones, it already sounds a lot nicer than the iPod.
I've also used it a fair bit (longer than 2 hours) and the battery indicator is still showing full.
The only downside is that I don't really like the software you are forced to use, but then I have never really like iTunes either.