I really like it. The video converting is quite a hassle, but if you have enough patience, you can convert basically any type of video to play on the iPod. The video is super crisp. I'm doing it at 512kbps, I think that's the best ratio between filesize and quality. I'm enjoying recording TV shows to my DVD recorder and then ripping/converting them using a simple program for my Mac.
Yes, if you are a college student/teacher and have ID you will get $30 off, so a 30GB new iPod would cost $269.