I've bought an iPod for an ex-girlfriend, and she told me she thought it was too great of a gift, and she didn't want it when I got it, but refused to give it to me when we broke up. Beeyotch.
Anyway, Elena has gotten a couple now, and they are pretty handy little devices. What I like the most about them is that you can set up you entire music library on one. So her irish tunes, my 90s rock, some country, and whatever else we have in common (in this case, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong), and then whatever you're in the mood to hear- that's the music that you have access to. No changing CDs, no turning on your laptop, and having to worry about the battery dying or going into sleep mode (she has the ipod, so I have to use my laptop, and I know it's foibles well).
They're pretty sturdy, they have a good battery life, and they're better than a radio tuner. Why listen to the radio and all the commercials out there when you can just listen to your own music?
-kv