I got myself an iRiver H340, and I have never looked back. I was all for the iPod, but when I got to the crunch, Il'd rather pay for features over looks. Thats not to say the H340 dosen't look half bad, but regardless of what I bought, they'd be hidden in my pocket and accessed with a remote.
Though the iRiver was a bit steap with the price, (I paid $700), it includes a 40gb player with 2" colour screen, input (which records to MP3/WAV), output and headphone plugs, internal mic(which records to MP3/WAV), usb host to conect directly to cameras and download their pictures, internal radio (which records to MP3/WAV), docking station, extra batery pack (like the belkin one for ipod).
Plus it can play Ogg, Wav, Mp3. View text files and pictures.
And also the free FirmWare upgrades garentee new requested features and formats possible. Even the AAC format will be possible soon acording to the iRiver engineers.
anyhoo, enough boasting for the moment, I'm just happy with the desicion I made