I think that ipods are pants but thats just my opinion.
I bought the Sony 20GB NW-HD1 for £100 and it is amazing. It stores more songs than any other 20GB because of Sony's own compression ATRAC 3PLUS.

The only catch is that they don't sell them anymore (where I live anyway) but considering it was supposed to be £250 and I got it for £100 I thought it was a very good buy, also it is the size of a credit card and is only about 1.5cm thick if that.