Quote Originally Posted by Lensman
The capacity of a standard CD is 650-700MB and can hold about 70-80 minutes of uncompressed audio, so a 512MB Shuffle should hold right at an hour of uncompressed audio and a 1GB will store almost two.

Note that most MP3s are encoded at relatively low bit rates (such as 64 or 128Kbps), hence the awful sound. All MP3s lose something because the format works to squeeze the size of the file down by throwing away parts of the original signal. But the amount of compression is adjustable. Encoding your CDs to MP3 at the shuffle's highest readable bitrate of 320 may still sound lacking on your home system. But you might find it acceptable at the gym. This would extend your music time to about 3 hours with the 512MB Shuffle or 6 with the 1GB version.

These numbers will be the same for other players.
Thanks for the clarification. 3 hours will be plenty. I went to BB last night to check them out and they didn't have the Shuffle or much of anything else for that matter. I have to admit, the iPod mini is pretty cool looking and very small. However, at $250 it's more than I want to spend for something of this nature. The iriver was cool as well but just as pricey.

Again, thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge. The search continues...