from my experience (and friends who have ipods) if u drop them either the screens will break or the hard drives will fail. However, there are loads of cases, metal etc. around....
ipods are not durable compared with other mp3 players, ull be luck to get 2 years from them (or in my case 2 months, twice)
u could pick up a 30gb video for £200 np or if ur luck on ebay a second hand 60GB.
anyway saying that, they are the most customisable, look the best, u can even edit the text and graphics
If u want the best get a creative video (or whatever there called) if u wanna lk cool and people to know what uve got get an iPod. Ive had both and the creative is far better imo