Almost all of my friends have IPods, but I have held off. 

There are a number of reasons why:

1) ITunes:  It sucks.  I hate it.  My current MP3 player simply allows you to drag and drop the files you want onto your MP3 player.  No syncing, no problems.

2) User interface.  I know a lot of people think the wheel is really cool, but I think it overly involves the user.  Tell me what is wrong with up/down buttons before you redesign the interface to use a wheel.

3) Batteries.  As noted at http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/.  The battery in an IPod can not be removed, and some say they start to fail after 18 months.

Well I came across a site called http://www.idont.com/, which went live today (before today it had some anti-ipod message up there). 

Turns out it is a site for the new SanDisk MP3 player.

The e200 (really catchy name… not) looks pretty cool, and might be worth me looking into more: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/03/sandisk-sansa-e200-series-review.php