MP3 player recs?

It seems quite likely that I shall be shopping for a new MP3 player in the January sales.

So: iPod nano? or not?

My criteria:
- reasonable storage capacity (I don't need to keep all my music on it all the time, but my little 512M player doesn't really hold enough for a long journey)
- good battery life (I'd actually be happier with something that took AAA batteries: no more reliance on the availability of electricity)
- I hate iTunes, and am quite happy using Explorer to copy files onto my MP3 player
- nice design
- ideally small and light