I buy CDs!

That makes me so optimistic in the progress of mankind... a spaceship builder who's stuck in the stone age.

iTunes is CRAP! anything associated with Apple is generally intrusive and crap!

I purchased an mp3 player for my wife that was generic and could use multiple programs for downloading music...

I have never like iTunes....I do think Rhapsody is ok...and have downloaded non-restrictive music in a .mp3 or .mp4 format that will play REGARDLESS of the music download service.

In my opinion the player needs to be flexible....after that the music download service needs to be flexible and not restricted to a particular format...that is the best option.

It removes the need to backup the music. It handily comes in albums so you get lots of your favourite music together. And it also leads to the possibility of listening to a track that you might not otherwise have downloaded. For example, I got a CD of The Proclaimers for the track 500 miles, but I also discovered on it On The Way, King of the Road and Throw the R Away, which I wouldn't have listened to otherwise.

EDIT: Also I find it far easier to search through a collection of CDs to find a few tracks that suit my mood at that time than to hunt through a gigantic electronic collection (although I have one of those too, I rip all the CDs I buy!).

I thought I'd bring this up again as I've just thought of another point. CDs don't use compression so I can rip the music into any format I like without risking losing quality from converting from mp3. I tend to use the ogg format in general but there aren't that many portable players that support it at the moment.

I reset it at...ooh, lets say.... 9.

You can use FLAC for lossless compression.

Yes but only if you take it from a lossless source, which is why buying CDs is better than downloading mp3s, in my opinion.