Need a non-Apple ipod
 

What do you call these things these days? I need one.

It's called an MP3 player. If you get one, don't use iTunes, as the format isn't the same.

There are many available for under $100.

There is probably a built-in mp3 player on your smartphone if you have one.

Great deals on a Zune! :D

Got the Y2Kid a Sansa Fuze a year ago. No complaints and she is very peer pressure conscious.

X2 on the Sansa. I got a Sansa "clip" (I think that's what it was called) which is equivalent to the iPod nano in terms of size and function except the Sansa has a nice bold screen. Got mine refurbed for like 20 bucks and it's been a daily companion to the gym, having been dropped and stepped on and whatnot it still cranks away like new, and the battery life is still very good. They're cheap and readily available.

Sansa Clip or Clip+ In addition to the on board memory, they also take the micro sd cards.. Cheap and actually very good sound.

I use my crackberry

Get something that supports flac and other open source codecs...

...ogg sounds so much better than mp3 for example...

If I don't use itunes what do I use? Anyway yeah, I want something I don't mind losing.

You'll have to purchase your music from places like Amazon. Itunes formatted music isn't MP3, and isn't compatible. However, you can buy a program that will convert it over to MP3.

I usually use my Droid, but now have my son's broken but working, Ipod. I got an Itunes account and am now adding my CD collection into the playlist. I'll have the 16gigs of memory filled before half of the collection is loaded.

Samsung Galaxy player is pretty awesome, and android based. Can do much much more than the equivalent iPod touch. And its not made by apple! Best part!

I have about 10 gigs of music I ripped from my own CDs. WMPlayer does it natively or there are lots of freeware programs you can download.

OP, the first question is whether you want an iPod "equivalent" meaning that you can WATCH things on it as well. If so, your choices are a bit more limited and your battery life will suck.

If all you want is a music player, not a viewer, here's a third (or fourth, I've lost count) thumbs up for the Sansa clip. They start around $40 and work very well. They also record (which can come in handy for some things) and will broadcast FM stations. The micro-sd cards are really cheap now so you can sort your music into libraries by simply using more cards (2GB ones are dirt cheap now), and you can use one of the full-size adapters to just copy music from your laptop to the cards, then insert them in the clip.

The only downside is that it has an internal battery and is charged off of the mini-usb port. A generic phone charger will charge it as well (I use one from my old Razr).

Good luck.

I like Media Monkey. It plays pretty much anything, can write to iPods and iPhones and is good a keeping track of large collections.
Windows media player works pretty darn well too, but is a little tougher to sort on.

My kids have Sony Walkman players. They can do video as well as music. Battery life seems to be excellent, and they haven't succeeded in breaking them now for over a year...

Not sure if you can load an MP3 player from Google Music, but it is a cool free service. I just dropped the contents of one hard drive into their cloud, now I have 20,000 songs available anywhere I can get internet.

+1 only caveat being they are a bit bulkier. But still pretty sleek in terms of form factor. A lot of stuff you can do with one. Basically a smart phone without the phone capability (and wifi instead of 3/4g)

Or pirate it off of Bittorrent or whatever the cloud filesharing app du jour is.