[motormouth]

Glad I found this out now, I was going to buy my first iPod this week. Guess I'll have to choose another.. any suggestions would be great. :o)

MM

[Deguello]

"any suggestions would be great."

Okay. If you are going to pay bucks for something, then take care of it. It is a electronic item; if you drop it, it will break. It you put it in your pocket with coins and keys, expect it to get damaged.

**Note that in the commercials, it is to be carried in your hand at all times.

If Mommy & Daddy gave you the money to buy it then never mind, they have their own problems they created.

[martin_fierro]

I protect my 4th generation 40 GB iPod with something like this:

It's been *great* so far.

Don't know what your listening/viewing needs are, but 40 GB and a B&W screen have worked fine for me. I don't need video capabilities and still have about 9 GB free space for music.

[El Cid]

SanDisk has some excellent models coming out in mid-March (they actually have some good models now, but I'm waiting until mid-March for their latest models) that they showed at the last Consumer Electronics show. The link below (you'll have to cut and paste -- I don't know how to copy a link) will give a synopsis of some of the MP3 players (from a variety of makers) shown at CES:
http://portables.about.com/od/mp3players/a/MP3PlayCES2005.htm