I wish my other purchases (laptop, WiFi AP, mobile, etc) were as simply satisfactory.

I just bought my wifre a nano as present.

(OK, I appreciate that your experiences aren’t good. Sorry)

Also of note is that your heat issue was almost certainly caused by a short in the battery (similar to the high-profile problems with laptops of late), rather than anything to do with the hard drive. Flash drives are slightly more drop-resistant, but they aren’t any less likely to have your heating problem, and they obviously don’t have nearly the capacity per price. But give Cowon’s iAudio a try or at least look at the website; you won’t be disappointed.

The huge advantage of a PDA is that is can contain your contacts etc synched with Outlook. I also have news synched with Avantgo, eBooks with MS Reader and videos from my digital video recorder with Core TCMP player.

I have had it for 2 years without a problem.

Proof?
As I have stated many times before, I use my iPod nano for one specific purpose, which is to listen to spoken word content (freely available lectures). Nothing is superior to the iPod in this respect; and the only way iTMS affects my life is that it is a repository for some of these (free, non-DRMd) lectures. You’d think producing a decent spoken word player would not be a difficult job, and if MS, Sony, Rio, San, etc could ever get their act together enough to do so, I would switch. But iPod has been out for, what, 5 years now, and, in all that time, these companies have still not figured out what the hell they are doing.

We have far too much IP legislation based on vague, non-evidenc-based claims about what is necessary to incentivize companies and individuals. We don’t now need vague,,, non-evidence based claims from the opposition.

Finally you lost one iPod, which can hardly be held against Apple. As for those that died, the fact is that these small hard drives are fragile damn things. This is a condition of the technology right now, and since the same hard drives (made by people like Toshiba and NEC, not by Apple or Zen) are used in all these devices, you’re not upping your chances of a long life by switching to another vendor. Flash should be more robust and, of course, at some indeterminate point in the future, hard drives will be archaic; perhaps if you are very active with your iPod the smart thing to do is give up on a hard drive and create a playlist of your favorite material appropriate for a nano.

Repeating for emphasis, for all the people who are whining about DRM. This method has been common knowledge on the tubes for years.

I’va also never bought a tune from the itunes store so DRM is not an issue for me. I do like the convenience of itunes playlist management. Who wants to add tags and sort mp3’s by hand?

I have a 4GB Nano so I was forced to use iTunes but I’m over it. By default iTunes wants to be your “master of the music universe” but you can turn that junk off and then it’s just an almost cool music database. With some other music players you’re forced to use Windows Media Player so it’s always something. Managing thousands of songs takes work and that means learning the ins and outs of various music managers. So if you want to listen to your music your way then you have to do the work.

If it dies I’ll probably go the satellite radio route and avoid the work.

Anyway: It’s still available on Macintouch’s homepage.

Oh, and by the way: My iPod (Dock connector, 20 GB) is approaching its third birthday with no major problems. I had to change the battery, though, earlier this year.

The good news is that even someone as un-handy as I can perform the operation provided she or he is equipped with the right tools and a little bit of patience. Why pay Apple 50€ for something you can do in 10 minutes?

One point to keep in mind as well: The drives inside these devices are made by a few manufacturers. It wouldn’t be surprising that Apple, River, Samsung, and Creative have used identical model drives inside their devices at different points in time.

I also have a 10GB Nomad Jukebox that’s three years old and still works fine.