Depends what features you want (portability, storage capacity, picture/video capability, etc.). Having said that, I really like my MobiBlue Cube, which falls into the very small, great for travel and workouts, good storage capacity catagory.

http://www.mobibluamerica.com/

I recently bought my wife and I matching 8Gb Creative Zen Micro Photos, and we couldn't be happier. They support the subscription download service that we use (Rhapsody), the oled screens are damn spiffy, and the controls are nice and intuitive.

I'm not completely thrilled with the battery life, but it's really my only complaint so far. I picked them up for about 190.00 each.

-Fan

On a similar note, does anybody have any advice on this?

What exactly does "remanufactured" mean, and should I care? A 20 gig iRiver for 160 US seems like a killer deal.

Well, iRiver makes high quality products. My main concern is how this "refurbished" status interacts with the warranty. There's no details on that, on Amazon. The un-refurbished version is 200 US, which is still 100 dollars less than the MSRP.

I gotta ask, how many of you have ipods?

Yeah, price is not yet decided and I didn't want to bias the person who has the all-singing, all-dancing mp3 solution. This is all great stuff and great ideas.

I have one, and I do love it. Older model, though, but still a very nice size, which was a major factor in my purchase. There are plenty of software options other then iTunes as well - in fact, Robear, I got one to work on a Sun box; figured you'd appreciate that

I'll second an endorsement of the Samsung. Besides the pros listed above, this thing is as sturdy as a brick. It has a metal bumper that rings the whole body of the player. There is no way I could see breaking this player if you dropped it.

My only complaint isn't so much the battery life, but rather the battery life indicator. It is an image of a little battery with 3 bars. 3 bars = 8 to 10 hours, 2 bars = about 3 hours, and 1 bar basically means you're gonna run out of power at any moment. It was frustrating the first time the unit crapped out, since I had thought I had a good hour or two left.

Sort of off topic but I wanted to share.

Wow, I went looking for a replacement for my Rio Karma, since I think it's going to bite the dust and nobody makes them anymore, and I couldn't find one decent 20GB+ mp3 player that supports OGG. What happened? That used to be standard issue on all non-iPod players. Not even iRiver supports it anymore

I have a 4th gen 40gb ipod... and it's a piece of junk. I have had to get this thing repaired about 4 times in the last 6 months. Still, it's holding on for now...

The hot new apple alternative seems to be this bad boy:

The Sandisk Sansa e200 series. It comes in 2-6 GB varieties, has an FM tuner, and is priced less than a comparably sized Nano.

It's gotten some good reviews lately.

edit: $193 for the 4GB model at newegg and circuit city right now.

Well, yea, well screw him man!

I've heard lots of good things about the Rockbox firmware... lots of format support, nice plugins. I'm planning on picking up a 60gig Video iPod in a few weeks when we move back to Seattle, and I'm seriously thinking of playing with this firmware. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'll stand with the Creative crowd. I had two of their players (Muvo and N200), and it always seems to me like they've thought of everything. It's intuitive, well crafted, looks good, plus: you don't pay for the brand like with the iPod.

I'm dejanzie and I'm a Creative fanboi.

This Rockbox stuff looks very interesting, I can get whatever player I want and use Rockbox, I'll keep digging.

*edit* Also all that stuff hubbins said