I have now gone through 2 nanos and a 40gb and don't want to buy another ipod. there is an 8gb sansa around for $50 but will it play my music which is in aac format? the sansa plays mp3 and wma's. I assume I would have to download a program to convert all the aac's back to mp3's which will take up more space on my hd (8000+ songs).

I've bought a cowon iaudio 7 w/ 16Gb (http://www.cowonglobal.com/) , it read many formats including flac. In all the reviews concerning mp3 players, it's the one player that is praised for his sound quality. I dont know if it will help you in your quest but it sure is a good buy. I'm too lazy to do a search in the GD forum but I know antiyou made a thread about the one he bought and is really pleased with it.