Ha, next time one of your friends shows you their shiny new iPod, you can take consolation that with the non-replacable battery will be giving them headaches in a year. Of course, from the discussions, it looks like most of the most severe problems are probably due to the 1.2 firmware. And I suppose you could always try to replace the battery yourself.
I’ve had a Nex II for about a year and a half and overall have been pretty happy. It plays MP3s and WMAs, and uses type I & type II compact flash cards, and runs on AA’s (very convenient, since I was able to interchange both memory and recharagables w/ my old digital camera). It also cost me under $100. There’s a new Nex coming out soon. I might be motivated to upgrade, especially if it has OGG support…