Ipod Christmas gift question.

Without getting too technical—the classic one has the biggest amount of storage and is physically biggest. The mini and nano come in various colors and have smaller amounts of storage. The shuffle has the least amount of storage and doesn’t have a good screen so you cannot go through your music as easily.

There is recently a new mini/nano out. I don’t know which they called it, but if it can be gotten for $150, it is probably what you’re looking for. It can do the extras, but also has a nice screen for doing the music and comes in a lot of bright colors.

The new iPod nano has a built in accelerometer and can play videos. (plays music too of course.) 8GB models are $150.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_nano?intcmp=AIC-WWW-NAUS-BUYNOW-FOOT-IPODNANO-080910

I have the shuffle and there is no screen. I’m not that technically oriented either. I got the new ipod Nano last Christmas and returned it because I really didn’t see myself needing space for 2,000 songs (or whatever it was) and I didn’t need to download videos. (I did think it was cool, however!) The shuffle has a 250 song capacity and that has worked well for me. The only thing that would be nice is if I could see what was playing, but it’s no big deal to be surprised.

I’d go with the new 8 GB Nano too. And if you buy it from the online store they’ll engrave it for no extra cost. (And if you get the red one they’ll donate a portion to aids relief!)

The advantage to the Nano and iTouch (as well asthe Shuffle) is both rely on flash memory instead of a physical hard drive. The classic iPod’s hard drive will crash at some point and then all you have a paper weight. No moving parts in always better.
I’d go with the 8GB Nano.