i guess $80 does seem a little much next to the Lithium batteries you can buy from Creative ($50) that pop into thier Zen NX and Zen Xtra players. Creative really went after the crowd that was worrying about the battery issue. Strong feature to advertise. You can even buy extra batteries to carry around with you. The sacrifice is that the Zen players are just a shade smaller than the Odyssey, making them pretty big next to a new iPod.
austonia... I know batteries. My concern is the cost. Maybe it's not a problem for you but I'm not paying $300 for a player and then $80 every 18 months plus shipping to maintain it. And I don't think a lot of EDIGGERS are either. After all it's not called a penny stock for nothing now is it?