I just got an iPod and it's great - took it on tour to Australia and it really helped the flights & long drives go by. I'm going to buy all the accessories - I've already got the Belkin back-up battery pack which fits on neatly and cost about AU$50 (£22ish) and gives me 20 hours of playback from 4 AA batteries (alkaline). You can get a car charger and a thing called the iTrip (not really legal in the UK as it transmits FM from the iPod to your car stereo, but you can get them from the US) - which means the internal battery issue is not really an issue for me - I'm not likely to go out on a 3 hour jog and want music piped all the way and I don't think many of us are!

Having looked in to the new MD technology, I don't think that for the price that it's that much better (definitely not as neat) - especially if the batteries will suffer the same problem.

Only time will tell if I personally get on with it - so far the only drawback I've found is that it takes bloody ages to put all your CDs on the thing - not sure how that can be fixed!

All in all I s'pose I'm just a sucker for new toys.

Cheers

Squeezy