Lightweight mini ipod recommendations

I'm looking to replace my portable CD player with a mini ipod just for jogging- I need something less bulky, lightweight, with rechargable batteries that won't skip when I jog for at least 25 minutes or so. I'm planning to use my regular CD tracks and convert them to either wave or wma files as I don't want to lose quality which from what I'm reading here, you do if you convert to mp3 files. If I'm only planning to use this for jogging & wearing earphones/headphones whatever you call these things, would the difference between the CD recordings and the mp3 recordings not be noticable in that scenario?

Anyway, would appreciate any recommendations for both the ipod & earphones/headphones as my primary concern is comfort & to make these things as light as possible. As far as space is concerned , anything between 1-4gb is more than fine for my purposes. Anyone know where to get these used? Any help appreciated.

Go with a Rio Carbon. The mini iPod is nice but it doesn't have hard bookmarking (something you'll definitely want if you're listening to audio books, podcasts or anything else for that matter. The Carbon is better suited for portable use due to it's shape. It's almost as rugged as solid state players as I've learned from dropping it a number of times on concrete and ceramic tile. No drivers required - plug into a mac or pc and drag and drop. It's iTunes comatible and Audible compatible. Best of all, it can be had for about 100 less than the iPod if you look around. Amazon and Overstock have them for about 150.

Thanks I'll check this out All I want an ipod or mp3 player is to get the lightest thing possible to hear quality music from my CD's when jogging, nothing else. This would take the place of my portable CD player.

Thanks for the info I'll probably get the Rio Chiba or Forge models

You might look into the iPod Shuffle as well. I use mine in much the same manner you're intending, and for $89 (512k) it's tough to beat. I've burned 6 full cd's in 128 AAC format and have used maybe half my storage. I admit I've never played it through my car or home equipment so I can't say how it compares to lossless, but through ear buds when I'm doing cardio and weights, it's more than satisfactory. iTunes is very user friendly and the iPod's market dominance ensures you have a ton of peripherals to choose from. It's absolutely tiny and weighs less than an ounce to boot. For jogging, I don't really see why you'd need to spend any more.

Hope this helps.

God, I got an amazing education after a few hours of researching this stuff. First I was going to go with Rio, but I saw some really bad reviews of customers as well as good reviews- in fact almost every "sports" mp3 player had some major defect judging by the reviews (anything that 2 or more people say negative I don't consider) & finanlly I went to the circuit city web site which has alot of reviews by customers that I generally find the most accurate overall & they had some really good things about the Zen Nano Plus MP3 players. What I liked about this was it came with an FM radio (you can get the same thing cheaper without one), you can record directly from your CD player (I'm not sure if this is a rare feature or not but they emphasized this) & bypass your computer if you want, is shockproof & can record about 250 songs or so, is shockproof (ie you can jog/work out with it) & is very light. The only negative I got from the reviews were the ear buds which I'll buy seperately. I thought I could get a good price on Ebay but the prices on it sucked and if I get it online somewhere I'll only save $10-$15 from what it would cost me to buy retail at circuit city, so I'm going to go ahead & buy one their this week. 250 songs is more than enough because I'm only going to use this for jogging & working out.

I thought the shuffle mp3's won't play music in the order you want (or in the Cd order)?
Any ear bud recommendations?

I haven't touched my Ipod since I got the Ipod Shuffle. The shuffle actually sounds better I think. The stock earphones were pretty crappy and too bass heavy for me. I have since gone back to my Sony 888's, although I've been considering a pair of Shure's. I have found the Ipod/Itunes interface to be unbeatable. The Shuffle can be either drag and drop or set to an automatic mode for loading songs.