iPods are great. It's just iTunes that sucks, and for the casual user iTunes is your only option.
iTunes slows down my computer to a crawl (my PC is somewhat old, but I have no problem running any of my programs except iTunes).
One wrong move will clear your library off your iPod, leaving you to resync, which takes forever. One wrong keystroke will bring you to the tediously slow iTunes store browser, which by the way I have never needed to use.
The video converting software just plain doesn't work. There's no way to do it wrong because it's pretty much a one-click deal, but I've never gotten videos to work the way they should without using third-party software.
Unfortunately, you'll end up spending so much time in iTunes putting together playlists, editing track info, converting MP3s, etc., that eventually iTunes will be your default music player. But if you can deal with that, the hardware itself is solid.