I bought an iAudio CW300 512MB MP3 player last night. It is manufactured by Cowon,
www.cowon.com, and is very nice. It is reported to get 30 hours of play from one AA battery, stores the MP3 files in four "Album" folders, has a voice recorder, and FM tuner built in. The price I paid was fantastic and am very happy with the purchase. I've had a smaller 128 MB unit for some time, but I felt it just didn't hold enough music. 512MB should hold me for a while.
The earphones with the iAudio are ok, and I think you can get a upgraded pair with different models. If you really want to be on the cutting edge, iAudio is coming out with a new model in the next few weeks or months that has a nice multicolor large display area. The website claims 124 different colors for the display and you can add in your own graphics, similar to cellular phone displays. If audio quality is paramount to you, check out the new earbud headphones from Shure,
www.shure.com. The buggers are expensive with their top model at $500, but they are supposed to be excellent at outside noise reduction and audio quality.
I guess the biggest downside to the iAudio CW300 is you have to install drivers on whichever computer you plug the MP3 player into. The new model due out doesn't require a driver disk and is recognized by Windows XP right away. This makes it easier to move your MP3 files or other files you can store in the unit around easier.
I hope this helps, and have fun with whatever player you decide to get. I can't imagine ever going back to a Walkman type cassette player and even lugging around a CD player is too much when compared to the size and convience of the MP3 players.