Bought this for my wife, as she wanted to be able to have something to listen to while walking home from work. Personally I've got a Creative Zen V plus, with Senheisser headphones. So that's my reference - iPods are OK but I've never been one for following the masses.
For the price, it's not a bad little mp3 player with fm tuner. However, it does have it's peculiarities that can only be found out by trial and error as there was no documentation at all with the player.
It took a while to get started, as it kept locking up during the initial charge. It doesn't hold the charge very long, so if you're planning to use it out and about, make sure you top up before you leave the house.
Once charged, it tuned onto radio stations OK and the pre-loaded mp3s played fine. The headphone socket is a 2.5mm jack, so I had to get a converter to allow me to attach better headphones than the ones supplied.
Windows XP & Vista both automatically detected the player as a storage device so no issues there.
So if you're a techie sort, you'll be able to use this just fine. If you want to just use it without having to think, you might want an iPod.