roSco,
I think you really need to do some homework. There are several things you really need to think about. What are you going to do with the player? Will this be for excersising, and will there be a lot of movement involved? If so, you may want to look into something with flash memory, rather than a hard drive. If you want sheer volume of space to put stuff, as MDS suggested, you will want a hard drive based player. That is the first decision. You will find that when it comes to flash based players, you will only realistically get up to at most 4 - 6 gb, depending on the player. After that, you will have to get a HDD based player. Also, do you require color screens, video, pictures etc? If not, then don't bother getting something that does it.
The next thing to think about is batteries. This is actually a big thing that really should be thought of carefully. If you get something that runs on standard AA or AAA batteries, if they go out, you can easily and quickly replace them with fresh ones, or recharge them in a standard charger. If you get a player with a proprietary battery, if they ever go bad, it could cost more to get a new battery than simply replacing your unit. Of course you run the risk of losing everything on the unit as well. Also, if the battery runs low, you will need to re-charge the entire unit, rather than taking the battery out, and tossing a new one in. This takes time.
Check out the other features on the player as well, do you want an FM radio, or voice recording, or do you want to be able to play more files than just MP3, like wav, flac, wmv, etc... What about an included belt clip or arm strap?
Also, how do you want to put the music on it? Do you want to use subscription services, or do you want to simply rip your own cd's, and pop them on like a USB memory stick?
For myself, I decided that I wanted a flash based player because I knew I would be using it mainly at the gym, so a lot of movement. I wanted a lot of space, partly for a lot of music, but also just in case I wanted to use it as a USB memory stick for some large files. This has already come in very handy. So I chose one with 4 gb of flash memory. I also wanted to get one that uses 1 AAA battery. That way I can have two batteries, and have one always charged and ready to put in if the other dies. (I use Maha Engergy's PowerEx batteries, with the MH-C204F charger, this is an awesome charger! The batteries last forever!)
I wanted to have an arm strap to put it on, and it came with one, albeit a rather cheapo one, but it works fine. I don't like to use iTunes or any other kind of subscription service, because I am against having to pay that much money for a song that I may not be able to use anywhere else other than my mp3 player. So I got one that I could use with the MSC (Mass Storage Class) protocol. That way instead of using the MTP (Music Transfer Protocol) with the subscription stuff, it works more like a simple USB memory stick, and I just copy and paste and I'm done. Oh, also I wanted USB 2.0. So, after looking for a few months, I finally stumbled accross the SanDisk Sansa M260.
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Item(1949)-SDMX3-4096-Sansa_m260_MP3_Player_4GB.aspx
It was kind of an odd looking thing, a little bigger than an iPod Nano, but it has the same amount of space, has an FM Radio in it, allows voice recording (which I don't care much about), and doesn't have a color screen, which I also didn't need, and had a single AAA battery. Compared to the iPod Nano, yes, it is a bit bulkier, but not by much. It's about the same height. Doesn't scratch as easily, doesn't have to use the stupid click wheel which I found very annoying. I got it at Circuit City for about $130. An iPod on the other hand will set you back closer to $200.
So you really need to decide what features you want, and how you will use it, and make your choice accordingly. Good luck on whatever you decide on.
-capT
