I use my Ipod all the time. It is great. I plug it into a speaker dock in the sewing room, so it gets charged at the same time. I have an 8GB Itouch. I have both music and books loaded. I only load one to two books at a time, but I like long books so each one may be 20 hours of audio.
I buy them from Audible.com. I just read the response where the writer copies the CD's into Itunes. That sound like a good idea. I might try that.