I'm sorry to hear of your bad iPod experience! That's the only recommendation I can give you, as that's all I've ever owned. I've had excellent luck with them, however. Assuming you get something like a nano (and can I just say how CUTE they are now, with all the colors and everything? It'd be nice if they could find a way to incorporate a little color into the Touch and Classic models.) that's flash-drive based,
Best Buy has really good warranty coverage. If your iPod proves to be defective or just quits working within their warranty period (which I think is 2-3 years), they'll exchange it for you on the spot. I had to do that with my 1st-generation nano a couple of times and they never gave me any grief about it. They were very thorough in making sure that it actually WAS defective and all, of course, but once they realized that I hadn't done anything to cause the problem, they were cool.
Hard-drive based iPods (Classics) don't get the same treatment, unfortunately. They require you to either send it in to have one of their people repair it, or you can have the option of taking a refurbed Classic instead. Either way, there's a delay of at least a few days in between the time you announce the problem and the time you have a functional iPod in your hands again.
If you do decide to go with another iPod and have any questions, ask away. I've owned a pink mini, a 1st-gen nano, an iPod Photo, an iPod Video, an 80 GB Classic, a 4th-gen (I think--it's the most recent one) nano, and now a 16GB Touch. The only one that's no longer fully functional is the mini, and that's only because I inadvertently cracked the LCD screen. It still plays, though--it's just a big pink Shuffle now, in effect.
