If you want my biased opinion, the ipod sucks. Great as a fashion tool, smaller than the Empeg for sure, but not half as good as the Empeg when it comes to either using it as a music server (the BIG hi-contrast screen and the visuals are cute, and the InfoText lets you see the titles from the distance) or as a car player. Ipods are designed for headphones and lack some great stuff such as multichannel parametric equalizer and BIG hard drives

Edit: You can't take your empeg with you on a plane or if you fancy a run in the park, but still, USB based drives such as my Creative Muvo provide plenty of storage and are lighter than the HDD based ipods. The ipod shuffle is another rip-off: costs more than the muvo and it's got no display!. What the hell?

AOC