got mine as a gift I had an archos player for my vacation in Europe and never really got into using it. . it kind of became my hard drive for my digital camera (one bonus feature of the archos)..
Theres a new card reader available for the ipod too from belkin
very handy if you run low on flash card memory on a trip
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=158350
I have the itrip too . . I took it on a 3 week road trip. Only downside was remembering to charge it every night ( I didnt get a car adaptor STUPID mistake) The itrip is cool but in my car the ipod had to be very near the antenna to get reception . . I wanted to toss it in the console while it played but that didnt work. .
If you really want to make it easy on a road trip get a new bmw.
ipodyourbmw.com