That was 2003. These days you can buy a good MP3 player at 20% the price of an ipod. Heck, you can buy them for 5-10% the price of an iPod.
You will hate this example but ——
A few years ago I bought a few generic MP3 players for $5 each. They have 500mb of storage. This is more than I need actually because I only use it when out walking or jogging. I plug it into my computer and transfer a few tunes same as I would with a flash drive. I use no special software
So for me at least..... Why on earth would I spent $150 on an iPod?
iPod Shuffle’s are $49 for a 2GB drive. For that you get a higher quality product in addition to the larger storage space. Not hard to see.