Major Life Decision

My 6 year old Compaq iPaq died today. I got it for Christmas in 2001 and since then I've run over it with a car (no joke this time), slammed it in my locker door, dropped it numerous times, thrown it around, scratched it with the stuff in my pocket, and lost it at least a dozen times. None of those things are the cause of the problem though. I think a contact pin got worn out because it stopped reading the memory card properly. I tested multiple cards and checked to make sure they were formatted properly, so I'm sure it's the player.

Now I'm in the market for a new one in the $50-$150 range. I've been thinking about buying a refurbished iPod Nano ($119), which is a bitch to get working right with Linux but is a solid piece or hardware. My main problem with that is that I always criticized the iPod for being too trendy, but I wouldn't be buying it because it's the popular thing to do. I'd buy it because I really need a new player. It's only 2GB (an odd statement, seeing as my iPaq was only 96MB) but I couldn't justify paying $160 for the 4GB model because it just seems like a lot of money. But then again, who can complain about a 24 hour battery life?

I've also been looking at the Rio Karma ($139), which ended production a few years ago, but is still available on eBay. The main point here is that it works as a removable hard drive out of the box, meaning it's Linux friendly. It's a lot less sleek than the iPod and weighs quite a bit more, but it's got a 20GB hard drive which is more than enough for what I want to do with it. The screen is kind of dull compared to the other players, but I guess I could live with that. The Karma is at the upper end of what I want to pay though.

The Sandisk Sansa c250 ($99) is more like the iPaq, but with a nicer screen and a 2GB upgradeable capacity. It won't play Ogg Vorbis files, but neither will the iPod and neither did my iPaq. It's not that important, because I can just change the URL to all my Ogg podcasts to the MP3 version.

The iRiver T30 ($40) was suggested to me, and it's at a great price. It plays nice with Linux and supposedly has decent sound. The interface is reportedly clunky and the screen looks kind of bleh. It's only a gig and I kind of wanted 2, but This is a nice unit (at a great price) if I decide I can't afford one of the other players. Or maybe I will get it. 1GB is enough for like 12 hours of audio, 24 if it's all podcasts because they're encoded at 64k.

I was also considering the Creative Zen V Plus, but ruled it out because it's just ugly. And it looked very ergonomically incorrect. That would be bad for my carpal tunnel.

So I'm in a bit of a crisis here. I'm probably going to have whatever unit I buy for another 5 or 6 years, so I want to make sure I make the right decision. I also can't live without an MP3 player because I like to have something to listen to while I walk, and I enjoy a great number of podcasts, so I might as well partake in both activities simultaneously. Any suggestions or recommendations?



EDIT: Forget everything I said about the iPod being a bitch to get working. It turns out that the media player I use in Ubuntu has solid, built in iPod support. This not only means that it'll be a piece of cake to get it working, but also I'll be able to copy music directly from my library instead of hunting around my hard drive for it. That's a big plus!