Hello Topspeed.

I did a lot of research before purchasing my MP3 Hard Drive based player and ended up purchasing the IPOD 4th Generation in 40GB Capacity. The top competitors I evaluated were the Iriver IHP 140 and the Rio Karma.

The IHP had a few functions that were interesting, such as optical output, remote control included in package, and a few other gadgets. This is probably the unit most Apple Haters reccomended at the time when I was looking into my purchase.

Rio Karma supposedly had better sound quality and gapless playback (this seems to be hard to do with MP3, but they found a way to do it, it has value for people that listen to albums in order and where songs follow into each other, i would only use this function when listening to live music recordings, not frequent) I looked all over and found good sound quality reviews but terrible reliability issues with this unit and "dificult usability" concerns relating to menu structures and navigation of the unit.

In the end, IPOD 4th Generation has all I needed. 12 Hour battery life, 40 GB Capacity (enough for about 7,000 songs at a 192 Kbps sampling rate), a very intuitive user interfase (much better than any other i tried, better than 3rd generation by far), a good size and weight factor, good sound quality (once you change the headphones), works with firewire and USB 2.0 for fast downloads, and tons of accesories for any use you may want to give your unit, plus hundreds of webpages with information, tweaks and mods.

My only complaint is the way Itunes works, it is slow to rip MP3, requires tons of computer resources, doesnt have all the functionalities that I get with Windows Media Player. I have resorted to ripping my music to my PC with Media Player and then importing it into Itunes for synchronization with IPOD. (there is no need for a third party aplication for ripping if you have WMP 10.0)

Although MP3 or the other ripping formats may leave some sonics on the table in the hope of fitting more music per MB, remember you will use this device to listen at the gym, on a plane, or train, or while riding a bycicle... sound quality of these devices is better than you would imagine, and nothing is more convenient.

I would recommend purchasing another set of headphones when you buy whichever unit because the ones included sound bad, fit badly and hurt your ears.

Finally, the price difference is worth it... the navigation, battery life, user options, etc. on the Ipod 4th Generation unit are great.