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The thing with the Louie case is that it's not even particularly attractive. I looked at that case and concluded that it was a complete waste to put such a bulky case on such an attractive electronic device. Now, Vaja cases on the other hand--if you actually care about style and not just pimping out a label, well, all of the money in the world wouldn't induce me to buy the Louis Vuitton case. Bomb testing is all it's good for. Or not good for, as the case may be...

It's cheap (like 10 bucks for 10 CD-Rs)

Holy shit man, where do you live? That is NOT cheap! I recommend you check out my favorite place to get optical media:

http://www.allmediaoutlet.com/allmedia/ritek-ridat a-branded-cd-r-cdr-52x-80min-700mb-blank-cd-media- in-50-100-200-500-1000-pack-group-1832.htm

You can get much MUCH better value you for your money there and many other places as well. If you have to get those "audio" CD-R's then they have decent deals on those too.

That, and I hate the iPod and mp3 players. They break more often than a 2 dollar pair of Giant Tiger headphones.

What exactly do you do to these things? I have had my iPod for quite a while and it is still in pristine shape and I use it every day on my way to work. Granted, my ipod came with a case from here: http://www.vajacases.com/index_01.html that gives it a whole lot of protection but even without the case I don't think it would be in bad shape. I know many people who don't have iPod cases and they aren't breaking their's all the time. What exactly makes a portable CD player more durable than an MP3 player that is well built like the iPod?? If I was going to do a stress comparison between an iPod and a normal portable CD player I would bet my money the iPod would be more durable and last longer, those things are built tough.

a touch screen would keep changing tracks when you walked around. Not good.

I have an iPod Photo and I think the other iPods are similar as far as having a switch that disables all the inputs. I am pretty sure this new iPod would have a similar switch to disable the touchscreen. A touchscreen would most definitely not be useless, just different then the current way to control the iPod.

What I would be worried about is scratching the screen. I have a case for my iPod that is a solid enclosure with clear, hard plastic over the screen and a hole cut out where the buttons are. With the new touchscreen I am curious if you can have a similar protective cover over the screen, yet still be able to have the touchscreen functionality. One last comment is I would not recommend shoving an iPod into a pocket full of keys, coins etc. Buying a case is relatively cheap and a lot of the cases either come with clips or quick releases. Here is a picture of the model of case I have and I love it http://www.vajacases.com/images/mp3/apple/ipod_pho to_30gb/bap101i/main.jpg

I wish the Mac zealots would quit whining about it and get a nice case for it.
http://www.vajacases.com/home_en.html

The only thing I regret about the Karma is that the only case I could find is hand made by Vaja leather and cost 75$. Ah well, looks nice in its case.

I'm the same way, except I use a WinCE device instead. In my case, it's a Compaq iPaq 3765 to which I've added a PCMCIA sleeve and a 5 GB PCMCIA hard drive which allows me to carry around a butt-load of ebooks and still have plenty of room left for games, music, movies, etc. Microsoft Reader, which is usable on the desktop or on WinCE devices is a pretty decent ebook reader app that remembers what the last book I was reading and what page I was on so it's almost as fast as flipping to real life bookmark or creased page corner. Before leaving on any trip, I load it up with fresh ebooks (including the MS Encarta Dictionary which allows me to lookup any word in any ebook I read by just clicking on the word) and make sure to have at least one form of charging cable with me (USB, AC or car adapter) and I'm good to go. The PCMCIA sleeve has an extra battery in it, and if I copy the ebook to local RAM and read it from there, the hard drive spins down and I can use the extra battery to keep the main system alive for several hours at a time. Inside it's leather case, even with the sleeve attached it's still smaller than most pocket novels, supports full color images (most .LIT ebooks include full color cover art) and conveniently clips to my belt so I can keep it with me at all times.

I purchased a Kingston 5GB Datapak PCMCIA hard drive for my iPAQ and it makes a great music player AND movie player and still has room left for pr0n!

I put it in a black leather case from the fine folks at Vaja Cases and although it's a lot bulkier than an iPod, it's much more useful to me.