It's not necessary to have an "ugly battery" compartment with user-replaceable batteries. My Sandisk player has just such a user-replaceable battery and the back of the device is firmly held in place with a couple of screws. It's a trifle thicker than an iPod nano, but there is no technical reason why batteries shouldn't be user-replaceable. It's a marketing decision with only very minor cost savings of not making the devices user-replaceable. Of course it would be nice to be able to use a generic size of Lithium-ion rechargable batteries (does anybody know how many hundreds - or is it thousands - of proprietary Lithium-ion battery formats there are out these for MP3/media players, Laptops,. Phones, PDAs, cameras, camcorders etc.? If anything guarantees long term obsolense it must be that; if we can have standardised NiMH formats, why not more take up of generic Lithium-Ion formats; alright, I know the real answer to that one...)