It started on the way to my hotel from the airport Monday (yes, I’m on a business trip this week – whoo hoo). It would think it was playing, but no sound. Or it would skip around on a song.

Then on Tuesday, it just flat-out stopped. I thought maybe the battery was flat, but after it was fully charged, still nothing.

It has the “folder with an exclamation point” icon on it. Windows won’t recognize it, iTunes tells me it needs to be restored, but then won’t let me do it (gives me an alert msg, but when I click “ok” it takes me back to my music library screen, and won’t let me hit the “restore” button – doesn’t stay on the screen long enough).

I spent my lunch hour today at the client site, reading the Apple support forum/knowledgebase. I’d rather NOT buy a new one, as the 60gb are no longer easily available, and cost as much as the 80gb. I’d get the 30gb, but I had 27gb on this one. So if I need to replace it, I’ll wind up with the 80gb video iPod (which sounds cool, actually, since I can get it in black), but I’d rather not spend those $$ right now.

But I’d also rather not spend 2+ hours on a plane without my iPod.

I’ve owned it for 13 months now, and didn’t buy a product replacement plan when I got it, so to my knowledge there’s no warranty on it anywhere.

Any ideas?