Just to be fair, in addition to me fawning over the iPod, here is a story on why not to buy one linked off of /.
Some of their points are good (moving parts for something to jog with for example), and price, but they don’t seem to have a single alternative. Having a 128 or even 512mb flash device is cool, but not enough for “real” music storage, even if it does get away from moving parts. The point about online stores is an echo of what microsoft said about it a while back (what? not recommending a competitors product? say it ain’t so!). I guess there isn’t anything that’s perfect out there (yet).