i finanally gave in and bought an ipod. yeah … it’s awesome. until it crashed three days after i bought it (a combo of upgrading to itunes 7 and unplugging it from my computer too fast). well … many hours later after trying a gazillion different things to no avail … i finally tried defragging the ipod’s hard drive and that did the trick. now it connects just fine (at least for the next few weeks)….