Of course they should back up, but my emphasis is really on the high number of people I've known with the problem -- It would be as if almost everyone I knew routinely had their computers' hard drives fail. Of course, that's just anecdotal evidence... :) But yeah to the not buying disc-based player absolutely. Love my little flash baby!

(iSm -- I have a Creative Zen V-- I didn't get the plus, because I think watching video on a wee little screen is just plain silly, but that's probably just me given the apparent demand driving the production of such features!)

To balance it out, I've not had anybody I know complain about their iPod (unlike actual Apple computers which seem to suffer an unusually high rate of hardware failures).

Here's what I like about mine:

From the moment I walked in the front door to the moment I had music on it was about 10 minutes.

But I'm also far from a power user since in the year I've owned mine it has probably seen about 50 hours of use.

As far as software issues go, keep in mind that if you want, you can wipe the native software off the iPod and install linux based stuff to run everything. I know several of my friends have done that and have the features and tweaks that they like best.

I love to hook my iPod up to my home stereo, my car or the vacation speakers I bought and have music any time, anywhere. What I don't like is managing only 4 gigs of songs. When they make 300 gb iPods, I'll be in heaven.

I love my 60GB iPod, but I need at least 40GB for the rest of my music. I've been keeping everything in MP3 and it looks like the stuff I drag out of my iPod is also an MP3, so I don't think that's an issue anymore. I never use the video functionality, but I do have the hardware to hook it to my TV, should I ever get to that point.

I think the batteries are now replacable on the new iPods, but it appears most people move on to new devices before the batteries truely die these days