It sounds like you’ve already committed to getting a nano instead, so I might offer a word of advice: change your import format in iTunes to MP3. By default, it uses AAC which most other players don’t support. At least if you change the import format, then the music you’ve imported from CDs will be in a format that other players recognize.
Apple provides a great integrated environment that makes it easy to use but hard to change to anything else. This is particularly true if you buy anything from the iTunes store, which will most often be in a format that doesn’t work on anything but iPods. It can be converted, but the process will make today’s experience seem quite effortless. The Amazon MP3 store would be my recommendation for music purchases - it automatically gets added to iTunes, and the format is compatible with anything.
It seems the whole point of iTunes/iPods is to get people locked into the Apple environment. I’ve been there (and I still have a lot of purchased music that is in iPod-only format because it was just too much trouble to convert).
