before you open your mouth, look at the price and specs of an ipod touch, then go search for a nokia n800.... you tell me what gets you more bang for your buck. I happen to own an n800... and i have experience with iturds, I can honestly say that nokia obviously doesn't like to dump tons of money into marketing. :-p steve should be in the marketing department, not running the company haha! (ps: they don't advertise half the crap you can do with it even on the official web site)
 
your welcome for your next media device.... if you want to spend more they have another one that just came out... get that one instead but it's about the same save for physical specs and built in gps rather than bluetooth... but eh, whatever.... i don't get lost so i'm good.

Another good one would be the Samsung YP-P2. Same touch features for only around 180-200 bucks. I personally refuse to buy an iPod. THey are very good at what they do, and Apple's marketing department is pretty close to second to none so they get props there.

It all depends on what you want to do with them.
 
I'd prefer an Archos over the other two options because it has more storage.  
 
The big drawback of the Nokia is once you buy it, then you need to buy memory for it, and that simply adds to the price. It's feature rich, but you need to buy at least an 8GB card of at least clas 4 SDHC to start making the comparison of price performance, and Nokia currently lists it as supporting on 8GB in SDHC, no mention of a firmware update for the 16 and 32MB sizes from what I saw.  
 
I loved my PSP, but it's big drawback was memory, and if the n800 is stuck at 8GB then it's still far from perfect.  
 
I have an iPod touch, but thankfully I didn't buy it , and it's hacked wide open. If I had to buy something I'd prefer an Archos 604 WiFi.
 
Also people forget the iPod touch's development community, with the number of apps already out there in the hack community prior to the launch of the SDK, that's one nice aspect.

I have a Sandisk Sansa E200 series, with 2 gigs built in. It's pretty cheap now, and works well if you just want a music player with some video capability. Decent amount of functions like AM/FM radio and voice recording. I think it's a nice cheap product that does all the basics of what a music player should do. Even the 8 gigabyte one is only 120 dollars at Newegg.

 
My brother has the 6gb version of the Sansa. It's pretty nice and I might be getting it from him since I accidentally put my Samsung YP-T9 through the wash a couple of weeks ago.  

you guys actually look at the nokia n800? it's VERY impressive especially at the price.... just to give you an example i've watched dvd quality movies on it, looks great. I've dropped it a few times on accident and it got some condensation on it too when in my pocket, and it still works fine.
just a few things i can think of off the top of my head:
nes emulator, neo geo emulator, scumm vm, (yes i've played manaic mansion and final fantasy at the airport), dvd quality movies, mp3, ogg, pidgin instant messanger, gaim instant messanger (both kinda the same), watch video's on toms and youtube, take notes, use the simple draw program with touch screen, change my backgroud to pics of hot girls, take pictures, make video calls over ip, get directions, download full maps, am/fm radio, etc. you get the point.
I also think someone is developing a mobile version of mythtv for it as well which would make me buy it all over again.
anyway, i bought mine for 230 bucks + shipping. If you want to watch huge movies, I suggest a true high speed sdhc card (it's sdhc compatible too) meaning faster than "class" like a sandisk utlra series or something... saves on transfer times from pc too. Oh yeah, it connects to the shared files on my network too, so i can just share content on my desktop and grab a new set of movies without actually plugging into the pc... anyway. want more info? ...

Then *Do an Online Search*  -  Don't SPAM the forums, thanks - TGGA

Yeah, which is why I commented on it directly. Nice but memory is an issue.

Those last two are pretty much the only things that you listed that the iPod can't do.
I have mine hacked with NES emulator, draw program, and that silly background stuff can be done with springboard should I have ever wanted to. The thing is though that alot of these functions are available in other devices, not just the Nokia.

Which would put that behind the Slingbox and a few other TV/PVR options for windows mobile and the Archos and the PSP.

You obviously don't understand what you're talking about here, because it's not ' faster than "class" ' since the "class" rating came along with SDHC and Class 6 or less isn't as fast as the Sandisk Extreme III on-SDHC and even though EIII SDHC is class 6 it's faster than all other class 6 I've tested at neat it's theoretical max @ 18MB/s with Kingston next at 15MB/s, Patriot at 13MB/s, A-Data at 12MB/s and the Class 4 isn't as fast as UltraII, so really the 'faster than' is funny, especially since there' no video even at 800x600 that should saturate the transfer rate of the 10MB/s of UltraII let alone the 20MB/s of ExtremeIII. SDHC Class2 might have difficulty with 800x600 AVI or similar low compression video, but not the fast Sandisk stuff, heck my Lexar 32X memory had no problem with my HP and Toshiba PockPCs with video in MPEG-2.

Try actually testing them yourself, and you'll see nothing SD will beat the Sandisk solutions, however an MMC+ or CF card would as they don't have the upper limit restrictions that SD has, so really you should get MMC+ if you're that concerned with transfer rates.

Which you can do with some of the other devices too. It's a nice unit, but not alone in alot of it's features.
And don't start advertising dude, or I'll have to sanction you like other product spammers. Being happy about your product is one thing, starting to advertise for them is crossing the line. M'kay !?!

i did some research on class ratings and found them to be unreliable and not consistent depending on who you got your sdhc card from, not to mention if you're pulling more than one thing off or onto it at any given period in time.. i've tested different cards, most of them suck and there is a difference in performance... eg: i can pull a 1 gig rendition in divx format of 300 off my sandisk but not other cards that are not rated as high.  and you don't have to "hack" the **** out of it to be compatible. and memory is not an issue because it's not a bashable harddrive, it's flash based so it recieves impacts VERY COMMON in this type of device. and if i wanted to watch tv proprietarily i would have bought a gameboy, or a game gear, or 500 of the other devices that provide tv... this possibly working with myth tv provides much more functionality than just watching tv... but that's what most would use it for...  I'm not "advertising" and you really need to stop before you started. If i were getting paid there'd be a nice graphic and a bunch of links... i'm just trying to open people's eyes to something that DOESN'T suck and it's a multifunction device at a great price.... Not to mention you didn't have a rebuttal for 50% of the crap that this thing does because you don't know all of what it does... it's just overall great... so you going to ban the 5000+ posters that say "amd, intel, ati, nvidia" cards are awesome? yeah, no, that's not going to happen... so no hypocrisy here.
 
Speed   Guaranteed Minimum Write
Class   Performance
Class 2 2MB per second
Class 4 4MB per second
Class 6 6MB per second
 
that's copied from about every chart i've found... they're mostly the same.
mine is rated at 9/10mb/sec add's quite a bit over class six which is common in most marketpaces, i also only paid $10/gig at the time which is roughly HALF of what the slower cards were going for.... you should find them at that price easily now.  (not to mention you don't have to PAY for all the software and bluetooth and gps, hell, getting free gps out of your phone could be worth 200+ dollars, and how much does a gps device cost? how much does your phone company charge to activate their proprietary gps program?, yeah, use it for free.... ANYWAY)
 
and now to this
 
"It's a nice unit, but not alone in alot of it's features."
that's just the problem, you don't know what all it can do... and at the rated battery life, what it does is more amazing than most products.. it does A HELLUVA LOT for how much it costs and how big it is... my point in case... and it's constantly evolving. I personally use it for in car audio video, and random on the move web surfing... because you know, i live in a place where wi-fi access is about as common as fat people in sweats are in wal*mart. ANYWAY. It basically does all the eeeeeee pc does, at half the price and more battery life, maybe a little slower, but also HALF THE PRICE, and twice the battery life... and it fits in your pocket...  
 
 
AND FOR THE FINALE!
you just named HOW MANY? different devices to supposedly compete with one...  thanks buddy for trying to rain on the parade.... but it's all good. I like a good opposition, without it we might never learn.

and btw... can you read i said "faster than 'class'" meaning faster than any of the ratings, and then suggested the sandisk ultra series... omg... read! please! dude, i hope you were really tired or something when you read that... if you really want i'll take a picture of my sdhc card and post it to prove to you what i meant...

It's funny for all that you're still promoting, and then you miss the whole SDHC comment meaning nothing. "Faster than Class" doesn't change your use of SDHC, which doesn't add anythign to either the Sandisk UltraII let alone the ExtremeIII which maxes out the SD limit (SDHC doesn't improve that limit), like I said MMC+ matter more, so once again, don't understand why SDHC would matter since it's slower as a class rating, and 'faster than class' isn't an improvement on previous SD top speeds, and it's still slower than other options like CF and MMC+.
 
Seriously, you can talk about people not knowing the benefits (Nokia must be hiding them if they aren't in their specs), but the relity is that while being capable and feature rich, so are other options. You pretend that the nokia is alone in many of it's areas, and it's not. And it comes down to pirce/features, and that depends on the user, personally I'd take a Fujitsu U810, but others might prefer the Nokia, or prefer the Archos because they still want it cheap, but value the larger HDD.
 
Anywhoo, SDHC is far from a notable benefit compaared to CF, especially when limited to 8GB. I'd prefer a unit that either has a larger HDD or accepts CF & SD so that I could use more peripherals as well as cheaper and much faster memory.
 
Anwyhoo, to each their own, and it's obvious that you like you Nokia, but it's definitely far from perfect. It's a solid unit, but definitely still areas that could be improved upon.

recommended something faster than the ratings they set. eg. a card that has higher transfer rates than are standard... and it's more widely compatible and not so proprietary.... usually smaller as well.
 
 
you forgot to mention that it's also open source based... it's evolving faster than any other proprietary platform  that I've made note of. Just this week i got 4 new programs. it also has a VM to run all the stuff your palm things will as well. I haven't taken advantage of that feature though.
I really don't care that it's nokia... It could be from any company (i prefer ethical ones) It's just something that you won't find anywhere else.. and it's way below the radar...on the other hand i'm all for... not some company (i prefer no assumptions).

I'll grant you it's below the radar, and definitely don't disagree that Apple is a company that relies on hype and the halo effect, but the iPod touch itself is not as limited as you say though.
 
Like I said, I would never have bought one ever, I would've gone with the Archos for the money, but that I got one for free I was like 'ho-hum' no big woop, just bigger storage than my PSP and less functional than my old UTStarcomm. The accelerometer is cool but a gimmick and means the forgot to add any real 'controls'.  
Howver after jailbreaking it and adding 4 pages of apps (including 2 $100&200 HP calculator ROMs) it's nice enough I'll keep it handy.  
 
I don't disagree with alot of what you're saying but some of your arguments, especially like SDHC aren't valid or well thought out. Remember SDHC is less widely compatible than either the ExtremeIIIs or MMC, and basicaly anything SDHC compatbile is also MMC+ compatible. As for the benefits of the n800 they're good, but it does also have limitations, like I said it would be better with either a CF port or with larger storage.  
 
On my old Fujitsu LOOX I had CF and SDIO, I was able to use a  T10/100 card in CF slot and hook into the network here at work. Still can't do that with any speed on most other solutions and I was doing that over 3 years ago.
 
Anywhoo I prefer more solutions out there even if they don't suit me, and I wish the Nokia and the Apples, and many other's continued success because if they don't continue to do well the segment dies again and people focus once more on silly tiny phone and dumb wearable PC appendages.
 
BTW, working for the phone company I get to try alot of toys, often before you guys, and despite my love of technology and my desire for cool and powerful things, I still prefer my Kyocera 7135 Palm based phone despite all it's limitations, because it meet my needs pretty well and is pretty robust. I've gone through 4 of them in about 4-5 years, and the only thing I'd prefer to replace it with is the guts of something like the N800 or Treo whatever in the form factor of the 7135. In understand the passion behind a 'nice find' but I'm realistic about it's limitations and other's benefits. I think tempered enthusiasm is best.

"If given the choice between two sets of hardware, which is better to program on? The one you are most comfortable with" -old 80's manual.
You are unwarranted in asserting that ipod users are retarded. All things aside, hardware is hardware is hardware. Given that they all do the same thing, why bash someone that has a preference for a certain device? And for what? a slight premium? I suppose you think we should ban designer jeans as well. Such utilitarianism is as dangerous as it is boring.

 
 
When will people understand...
 
A Ferarri is better than a Ford or GM, but more people own GM's and Fords because they are accessable..
 
The Ipod is accessable by everyone because it needs little technical knowledge..
 
The Nintendo Wii is far technically insuperior to the Xbox 360 or PS3 but has sold x amount of times more...
 
Why because every one wants a machine that works simply without pushing 55 commands or using innacessable menu by 5 button presses..
 
The ipod wins because its a.easy to use, b. the industry standard, c itunes the worlds biggest online store works simply with it. d. its just a mp3 player e. it looks chic' e. it did it better than anyone else f. its a fashion icon g. everyone who owns one buys another..
 
Nokia maybe technically superior in every way but the ipod is the main thing that makes Apple  Apple and the Wii makes Nintendo Nintendo . Inovation..

Agreed. Well said.