JI!: Without knowing what you want to spend it’s hard for me to make a recommendation, but I’ll do so anyway! I’m a big fan of the Shure in-ear headphones. These might not be what you’re looking for as they fairly completely block out external noise. They ride right up in your ear canal so you’ll be deaf to the world when you use them. They cover a fairly decent price range starting with the E2 at around $200. Some of the higher-end ones come with an in-line ambient mic so you can actually feed the world back into your headphones if needed. Like for short conversations at the grocery store. I have the first-gen E3s which have seen a couple of revisions since I bought them. My next pair will likely be a pair of E4cs.

There are other issues with in-ear monitor type headphones. Fit is critical and occasionally problematic if you have funny-shaped ear-canals. I have to use disposable foam ear-pieces with mine which are awesome, give excellent noise-blocking and good sound quality, but I can only use a dozen times or so until I need to replace ‘em. Shure sells ‘em in bags of 20 or 200. They also come with a bunch of different-sized, reusable ear-pieces but I’ve never been able to get a reliable seal with any of ‘em.

For less money, I think the Sony noise-cancelling ear-buds are the crowd favorites. They look stupid, but supposedly work pretty well. Check out the reviews on iLounge for some reasonably in-depth coverage on the topic.

Rob: The 3G iPod is a total workhorse. I had no complaints with it other than the occasional, seemingly random alarm going off (usually because I’d changed my calendar settings or the time got changed on it). I had to replace the battery, but that was more fun than annoyance and it considerably increased the battery life. Speaking of which, I actually saw replacement batteries for 4G iPods in the Best Buy the other day. Crazy. I had no reason to replace my 3G iPod other than the lust for something new and the personal promise that I was going to buy the first 80GB iPod that came out. Being able to put all my stuff on one device is awesome.

I’m such a peasant with my 20Gb 3G, but I still love it. It’s been ages since my library (~12,000 tunes, ~35Gb) all fit on it, but I can manage just fine with ~6000 tunes on my bus ride home. Thanks to my compulsive tagging and extensive smart-playlisting, all my essential tunes are with me on the go.

And the thing has given me absolutely no trouble after 2.5 years of daily use. I won’t replace it until it gives up the ghost. Yay Apple.