I've been thinking of buying a portable digital music player but don't know much about the selection out there. I'm thinking of an iPod just because I've had good experience with Apple products in the past. I know there are a lot of other options. Anyone else have a review to share?

Since you mention the iPod I assume you're looking for a hard drive based music player with large capacity (20, 30, 40GB), right? Or would you be happy with something smaller and less capacity (256 or 512MB)?

I'm not familiar with the performance or reliability of any of these, but you can get a 40GB Nomad for about $50 less than a 20GB iPod. Have you looked into one of those?

Right, I'm looking into a larger player. I'm not familiar with the Nomad. Basically, I want to find out if the cheaper players on the market are any good or if I should just invest the money in an iPod.

Steph,

I have an iPod, I bought it just prior to going to Kuwait. The battery lasts about 10 hours and loading it through iTunes couldn't be simpler. FWIW, I dropped it SEVERAL times in the sand and it still plays just fine. I'm not saying you should try dropping it, like at all, but the fact that it survived a 5 foot fall into the sand is pretty good. I have one of the older ones, so it doesn't have some of the cool features that the new ones do like Smart Playlists, and the calendar and wakeup features. But I would definately recommend getting an iPod. If you buy it through the Apple Store, you can laser engrave the back of the unit with whatever you like, and can purchase an Apple Care extended warranty for it.

Thanks Dexter. Looks like the iPod may be the way to go. They look the coolest, that's for sure. ;)

Also look into the Dell Digital Jukebox. The 15GB starts at $199 (well below the IPod price) and has the ability to play .wma music files which IPod does not (7,000 songs in fact). I've heard nothing but good things about it and will probably purchase this instead of the IPod. I've put a couple of links below.
-Steve

Here's a review of it from CNet:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Dell_Digital_Jukebox_DJ__15GB_/4505-6490_7-30582921.html

And here's the link to the product on the dell site:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/dj?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs