Dang, beat me to it....was thinking of posting this yesterday as I am getting an iPod.
Alright, so up till now ive been using my ultimate setup....that cost around $35.00. I have a MP3-CD player with a tape deck plug thing and it has worked fine. It holds around 2000 songs on 7 CDs; I am constantly having to add more CD because between me and my friends we accumulate 100 songs every week or so; after a month I have +400 or so songs than the month before. I have a 25 min commute from/to school every day, so I have time to listen to them even if its only in the car....the thing is, its tough to drive and switch CDs when you want, also, for the same reason, I cant listen to one song on one cd, then another on another cd because the switching gets tedius.
The setup has a ton of wires running back and forth from the tape deck to the console, from the console to the cig lighter, from the lighter to the console, from the console to the switch and the switch back to the console.
Anyway....its time to clean stuff up. I have to admit that ive never been so interested in iPods specifically. They were always too expensive for what they gave you; 20gigs, non-lith-ion batt, itunes sucks @$$, etc.....untill now.
With the release of the 30gig lithium-ion batt. powered, video playing, picture holding iPod, it is comperable in price and features to the top MP3 players. Its $299 for 30gigs, 14 hours batt (decent), but PLAYS VIDEO!! I am opting for the more powerful and larger 60gig iPod, with a 20 hour batt. life.
I plan to not only use it for music and pictures, but save whole movies to it and watch them when there is downtime during camping (and there has been some serious downtime.) It can hold 150 hours of video, and plays for 3 hours while watching videos, but I can easily rig a lead from my car batt to the AC power/charger and run it all night.
With the best buy warrentee (which is suprisingly good considering its best buy; aka. worst return) it will come out to be around $500 with the AC power/charger, including tax and shipping.
I believe its the best way to go for what I want.