I've got one, and it's a great player - small enough that I don't even need to think about whether to bring it - it just lives in my bag.
I'll confess that I just don't understand the battery life complaints. I took my nano on a flight from Seattle to Munich via Chicago, spent most of the 12 hours of flight time listening to the Nano, and it still had battery left when I arrived. What more do you want?
I guess I just can't imagine wanting to listen to so much music on my iPod that it wouldn't last at least a couple days without recharging... Do people really use their iPods 6-8 hours a day, and having it on the charger overnight every other day is a real burden?
So, I'd say it's an outstanding buy - 2G if you don't have much music, 4G if you have more, or if you like audiobooks.
We also got a 30G Video iPod, and for $50 more than a Nano, you get room for all the music/audiobooks/computer files you'll need, plus the capacity to play movies - my kids LOVED it on the airplane over thanksgiving weekend - I'd ripped a bunch of movies we have on DVD down to the right size, and they're about 300-500MB each - all ten movies, plus all my music and audiobooks have the iPod less than half full.