I shopped around and found that the Sansa Fuze has the bells and whistles of the iPod (and is easy to navigate, unlike the incredibly slow and difficult ultra-cheap players) at about 1/3 the price. We're on our second set now (my son's was plumb worn out last spring and he borrowed mine, but got caught in a heavy downpour and didn't stop using it when it clearly needed to be dried out. . . ).
I use Windows Media Player to rip my CDs to the library (in the computer) and then from there "sync" or drag them to the media player (once it's plugged in and acknowledged by Media Player). Sometimes I just use Windows Explorer to move stuff around.
Mostly I seem to use it for the FM radio. If I'm out driving in the pickem'up truck and hear a good story on NPR and don't want to wait in the truck for it to end, I pull out the mp3 player, tune in the radio, and off I go. So it is a glorified transistor radio. :)