Which MP3 Player?!?

I don't know if it's just me but when I spend over $50 on something, I have to do my homework on it. As the price of the item increases, the feeling that I have to examine every possible alternative increases. The latest research project has been in the search of an MP3 player. This search consumed 4-5 hours over the span of a week.
I was looking for a player with small size, plenty of capacity, great battery life, and stylish appearance. My search led me to CNet.com. This site is great, they review, compare, and even provide video demonstrations of all of the products for you. They even tell you where to get the best price for the item. Their best rated players that fit my criteria included: the Apple IPod Mini, the Creative Zen Micro, and the Dell Pocket DJ. The iPod Mini (at $249) has four Gigabytes of storage while the other two have 5. (F.Y.I. a Gigabyte or GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes or 1,000 megabytes.) So the Zen Micro (also $249)and Dell ($199) have 25% more capacity than the iPod. As far as battery life goes, the Dell has 10 hours of playback, the Zen 12 hours, and the iPod mini a mere 8 hours. At this point it was looking bleak for the iPod, which was beaten in battery life 25% by the Dell and 50% by the Zen Micro. I also found that the Zen has a FM tuner and a voice recorder. At this point I had made my decision, I will get the Creative Zen Micro.
Then Apple released a new iPod mini. This newer version has the same capacity but increased the battery life by 125%! The mini now lasts 18 hours, 50% more than the Zen. But there's more, the mini also went through a 25% price cut. Now at $199 the Mini is back in the picture. What it all came down to was style. The Mini is the most attractive player on the market and that more than makes up the 1 GB capacity difference between it and the Zen Micro. This in mind, I bought my way into the iCult for a mere $216.95 including tax and shipping.