Hello Boymeat :) Student here if needed :)

The Pricing is very similar to what Bose does for their speakers...It's set and rarely does it go below their pricing.

Mine was purchased at J&R

I got the 20gb too. I agree with you, for the price difference it's not worth it to go lower since you get more stuff with the 20. You'll probably want to look into getting something so you can listen in the car too. If you have a tape player you can get the same thing you use to connect a cd player, otherwise you can by a transmitter. Belkin has a new one out that lets you choose the station to transmit to. otherwise, there is another one iTrip that works nicely.

I bought mine right at an apple store when they were having a grand opening sale, so I got a percentage off. I reccomend finding someone with a discount :)

What you missed is a policy called "minimum advertised pricing." If a retailer sells for under that price, they don't get co-op advertising money from Apple.

I'm currently using iTunes without any external player, but I'm hoping to get either the 20gb or 30gb iPod in the next month or two.

lionessindc raises an important point about iTunes on Windows. Be VERY careful when you install -- it will ask if you want to let iTunes manage your existing mp3 collection (or some question to that effect). If you choose yes, it will reorganize that folder into subfolders for each artist, then subfolders within those folders for each album by each artist. It does this based on the ID3 tags in the individual mp3 files, if memory serves, and not any metadata encoded into the filenames. So if you have a file with data in the filename (1_fozziebear_themuppetshowtheme.mp3, let's say) but without corresponding ID3 tags, the file will get moved to $MP3DIRECTORY\Unknown Artist\Unknown Album\themuppetshowtheme.mp3. Which, when multiplied by the hundreds or thousands of files in a typical mp3 collection, is a bitch and a half to fix. But the sorting/searching features in iTunes are REALLY useful -- I strongly suggest going through your collection and making sure all of the ID3 metadata is correct, THEN (and only then) checking yes.

I imagine that most converters will handle that, but I'm not sure. Keep in mind that iTunes is a free download, so you can play around with it before you buy the iPod. And you can set up searches and "smart playlists" to help find things that aren't tagged right and correct them, before you let iTunes reorganize your music directory.

Don't forget that Apple always assesses your state sales tax, whereas most resellers do not. Be sure to factor in the sucky 8.25% when comparing prices.

Great pricechecking resource:
macprices.com (http://www.macprices.com/ipodtracker.shtml)

I've heard a lot about iPod but lately I have been hearing about it even more. After reading your post, I finally decided to look into it. Now I can't wait to get to Best Buy tonight and pick myself up a 20 gig iPod!