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I got a 1GB iPod Shuffle when I was in the market for a 1GB USB drive and realized I could essentially get an Apple-quality music player for free for approx. the same cost.

I happen to also have gotten these in-ear headphones (Sony MDR-EX71SL) recently. They have amazing sound, are very comfortable, and have an unusual cord design (junction about 18 inches from the ear), which at first annoyed me, but has since become a godsend: I can now stick the Shuffle in a business-casual shirt pocket using only the short portion of the cord (leaving the extension at home, in my briefcase or wherever). This setup is awesome as it's almost no weight, no cords in your way, just sound coming into your ears completely without hassle. I also got a strap for my arm for when I run and the short portion of the fontopid is the perfect length for that too.

So I strongly recommend this combo if you're interested in a Nano. You won't really miss the screen that much as long as you are intelligent about the playlist you set up to sync with the Shuffle...

I was gonna mod you up, but I'm gonna have to join in the rave, right here. I've got a pair of Koss The Plug headphones that I really like -- it takes some getting used to stuffing all that foam in your ear, but it isolates outside sound great. Not 44dB, but still impressive. Apparently sony also have an affordable, and better-sounding, isolated headphone, which is surely on my list of stuff to get. I've tried Sony's active noise cancelling headphones, and the effect is amazing; you'd be standing next to a subway wagon speeding past hearing almost nothing. Kinda scary, even. Neatest thing is a switch to turn noise cancelling on or off so you can hear the effect (or perhaps switching noise cancelling "off" just turns on a noise generator ;-).

I'd say, go for some sony plugs - they're really not bad, and you can spend as much or as little as you like. (I also like Sennheiser, for non-isolated/noise-cancelling headphones for everyday use, the low end stuff is great value for money, especially compared to low end crap from Philips).

I have been using one of these for well over a year.

Coupled with USB Overdrive (Sorry, Mac only!) this is the best mouse I've ever used. Good luck finding one in North America, though.

I keep my hand straight and rest my arm on the desktop. The mousepad I use raises the mouse just enough so that I can rest my wrist on the pad and move the mouse with my fingers and a minimum of wrist/arm movement.

I've rotated the pad 90 degrees, so that the "top" is now one of the "sides". This give me more than enough room to move the mouse and still have sufficient area for resting my wrist on the pad. YMMV.

Not only is it a functionally superior mouse, it's also bloody gorgeous, too. A beautiful little piece of abstract sculpture on my desktop.

I can, and have, used it for hours at a time with no distress whatsoever.

it does not look like shit. It looks more like a butt about to produce shit. The red one looks kind of vaginal to me.

anyway, I have seen and own a pretty mouse - the MAPP mouse by elecom is gorgeous. The price has dropped, I paid $85 for one, but it was worth it.

Asus makes laptops with upgradable CPUs. You can even buy them barebones (No CPU/RAM/Harddrive).

Actually, Apple tried that too. Check here for an informative, if slightly outdated (newer upgrades are available since then) list of these upgrades. However, the economics of upgrading is usually doubtful. I was considering one back in the days of my old powerbook 1400 - finally I reckoned that for the price of new battery + USB card + new CPU + more RAM I can just sell my powerbook and buy a brand new iBook... and still have a much better machine. When you want a faster car, it's usually a better idea to sell the old vehicle and buy a new one, rather than go through the mess of tuning. It takes a hobbyist to prefer the second way - with laptops it's similar.

Would that be the same "good solid engineering" that produced the extremely overpriced TiBook, which had trouble with airport range due to the materials it was built with, the same engineering that flaking body paint?..

Would that be the same engineering that allows for body and hinge fractures?

Wow, thats some damn good engineering!

Bare Feats has some benchmarks:

http://www.barefeats.com/pb8.html

As does PowerBookCentral:

http://www.powerbookcentral.com/features/ibookvspb g42.shtml

And of course Macworld has benchmarked the machines:

http://www.macworld.com

Read the following article for a quick summary, and follow the link to the actual research paper to read about how it works. It is quite interesting.
http://www.powerbookcentral.com/columns/knowles/08 1501.shtml