Matt, thanks for the info.
Still wondering about photos, though. One of the surprisingly knowledgeable staff at Fry's* told me that images had to be in a certain type of album format before being imported into an iPod, so now I'll be seeking even more info about that. Joy-y-y-y-y-y.
As for battery life, the 80gig is rated for 20 hours of battery power while playing music, and based on my experience so far, I'd say that's not too far off: I've gone about 8-9 hours playing music and the battery was down to about half...and I tend to use the screen backlight a lot.
As for backing up your mp3's, I'd strongly recommend purchasing an external drive and using it as a backup. It's reasonably quick, a lot less hassle than burning dozens of CDs or DVDs, and the prices have plummeted on spinning storage: I got a 160 Gbyte IOmega external drive for $80 after rebate ($120 without), and this was about 18 months ago. I seldom disconnect it, it runs continuously, and I've had no problems whatsoever....although their built-in backup program sucks (filesystem can't handle some filenames). So, I do it myself at regular intervals.
Heck, Fry's had 1 Tbyte (yep, one terabyte) storage units for around $600 after rebate.
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* the sales personnel at Bender's, however, were quite rude...until I offered to get them an oil bath. </obligatory Futurama quip>
