In terms of which iPod is best for you, there are basically 4 models to choose from. As mentioned above, the iPod Touch looks and functions like the iPhone, except it doesn't make phone calls. It uses flash memory with capacities ranging from 8GB to 64GB, and you pay more for more memory (the cheapest is about $190, while the most expensive is just under $400, ouch!). What you get is a big player with a big screen, that plays music and movies, along with video games and thousands of other "apps" available from iTunes. And it can connect to the Internet via WiFi to gives you access to email and web browsing, maps, etc. as well. So if you are not looking for a tiny little player, the iTouch is our pick as the best since it is so versatile. If you want something smaller, the "classic" iPods are still available as well. The iPod Classic is the one with the famous scroll wheel on the front and a smaller display screen, while the Nano is just a fraction of the size, the orginial mini MP3 player, and the iPod Shuffle is the ultra-tiny clip-on model with no screen, just music. The iPod Classics are the only model that uses a small hard drive for storage instead of flash memory, so they have higher capacity (store more stuff). So if you really need to carry 100GB+ of music and movies around with you, it's probably the model you need. If I wasn't getting the iTouch, I'd probably go with a Nano because it is so small and portable, while still capable enough to handle music and movies/videos.

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What are the best MP3 Players I can buy? iPod? Sony?

Let's start with the normal hard drive based MP3 players. A little larger than a deck of cards, these music machines contain a small hard drive inside, like the ones found in laptop computers. The Apple iPod has pretty much owned this category. These players come with capacities ranging from 20-60 gigabytes (GB). An average MP3 song takes up about 3 or 4 megabytes (MB), so that means you can hold about 250 songs per gigabyte, or 5000 songs on a 20GB player. Obviously, most of us don't have more than 5000 mp3 songs in our music collections - so people like Apple are adding additional functions to their players, like the ability to store and display color photos.

A 20 GB iPod can be yours for around $275, while the 60GB iPod Photo is more like $400. A number of other companies also make this style of MP3 Player. The Creative Labs Zen Touch (40GB about $250) is a sturdy, excellent sounding player. The Dell DJ-20 comes in at under $200 for 20GB of storage. But given all the accessories available for the iPod and its dominant market position, your best bet is going with an iPod (and they work fine on Windows computers as well).

Micro Hard Drive MP3 players

Flash Memory MP3 players