Ipod..beats having hundreds of tapes in a backpack and a walkman that I carried around in High School. Easy to transfer music to it both on a Mac and PC...plus I can put my whole library on my 60g. I can save tivoed movies/shows to it when I'm traveling. My older ipod broke once after 2 years and even though it was not in warranty I got it replaced free - quick snap with a smile no attitude and no mailing (just walked into the apple store). The only complaint is the sound but with a good pair of cans (seinhesser)...it's all good.
While I am a bit of a Apple zealot, I was just looking on this site that reviews a lot of different mp3 players and man, there are some that Apple could really learn from.
Take a look at this one; has nice built-in speakers:
[MEDIA]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4267860153701118529&sourceid=docidfeed&hl=en[/MEDIA]
I must say though, it is a pity that there are sooooo many interesting mp3 players like this out there, but they only make them to hold around 1000 to 3000 songs/2-8 gigabytes of data. I already have nearly 3000 songs and I there are so many bands that I know of that I haven't gotten yet, this number will surely double or triple soon. I think this is what sets Apple's iPod apart from the rest. Yes, there are a few other companies making mp3 players with similar sizes like Creative (sorry, but the majority of their players are just plain ugly and I don't like their touch-strip or whatever it is) and now Microsoft with their Zune, but neither of these have both the style, ease of use, and compatibility (the iPod is one of the few Mac compatible mp3 players; I have to use this weird program to use things like my friend's Creative Zen) of the iPod.
I hope all these companies start getting more innovative like the company who made that player in the video and I hope that company starts making their mp3 players in larger storage capacities.