Besides the *.mp3/etc. thing, even if you are using 320kps or *.wav, I still don't care for the players that much.
My daughter has a IPod, and, my son has some generic thing that looks exactly like it, except it's half the price, has a better display, and ya load it just by dragging to it like a separate drive, keeping the albums in their own folders, no computer prog necessary and built-in player software you needn't install or update.
I like his 100% better.
Butt still, I make a CD, I keep the CD, I grab the CD I made to hear it, or one of the thousands I bought, I lend it out, I move it around ....
A CD costs less than a dollar to make, and burns at 48x, what is quicker than ripping and loading through I-tunes.
With a commercial CD I look at the artwork and and reference the notes, I hand it to my friend to hear, I put it back on the shelf until I wanna hear it again, and then I play it on my Discman or any other player in/about the house (studio, back yard, garage, bathroom, living room, kitchen or any of the bedrooms, etc.), it's its own back-up (more or less), if the batteries on the player run down I can easily switch to a different player, and if I'm ever held hostage in my own house I can sharpen the edges and make killer frisbees.
IPods, on the other hand, run out of power, are a PITA to load, are easily lost, tend to encourage compressed shitty-sounding files that I don't wanna borrow, have awkward or no ability to give liner notes and art, are more difficult to transfer songs from, and would seem easily swallowed on especially drunken nights.
Yay, I am a Luddite.
I even use rechargeable batteries.
