The mounting of the iPod HDD is simple, with rubber shock mounts all over. For a simple reason... it simply keeps the HDD in the iPod living longer.
And with removables, well, ever wondered why many Nokia 8000 series phones have a loose back battery cover? And that is what you get for a removable this, removable that gadget.
iPod industrial design still wins hands down. Simple common sense design goes a long way. Portable DVDs? that would need a fairly large player... cannot slip into my pocket.
iPod still wins. I am not convinced with the other "new" designs. And the removable drive unit looks butt ugly (personal preference doesn't count in polls)...
Unless someone uses that thin looking drive and cascade them into a mp3 player and making it 50GB (a matter of time anyway, with platter technology ever progressing, HDD will be larger than that...) so iPod STILL wins.
Hmm... I wish there are better choices out there, because there are still some functions I wish in my iPod. Car chargers is bull if you are on a bus on a long trip. So you pretty screwed. So external battery pack with Firewire? Well, someone read this and come out with something soon. It is not that hard. We have USB chargers running on 9volts batteries in Asia for more than a year. JUST GIMME THAT FIREWIRE CONNECTOR DAMMIT!