Bear in mind, however, that the iPod limits you to using audible.com. You can’t use competing services (without considerable difficulty, anyway) which I think is supremely irritating, as there is at least one competitor in that marketplace and, IMHO, they’re better.
Ok, I gotta know: who’s the competitor?
Audible.com lets you use quite a few different mp3 players, btw. I’ve personally used about 5 different devices, and nary an iPod in the bunch. Not that I have anything against iPods, just haven’t used one.
I’ve just got a shuffle for xmas (not ideal for books, I know. But it was cheap and that’s cool) and I’ve loaded Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash onto it. 17 hours of book, and it’s used less than a quarter of my 1gb that’s available. My biggest problem with the audiobook was the cost, though. $45 AU for a book that physically cost me $19.95 to buy. The abridged audiobooks are around $15 or so, but for the unabridged versions (which I prefer) they’re just as expensive if not more so than buying a hard copy of the book from a retailer.