well, as with any hard drive based player (any of the high capacity ones), they try to minimize the ammount of time when the hard drive is moving. the iPod has 32MB of flash ram, giving it at most about 30 minutes of skip protection. if u are running in the breif (5-10 seconds) time when it is spiining, u might get a little pause in the music, but prolly nothing major. and if you do, u have the 1yr warranty
theres revies of most of the iPod products available at
http://ipodlounge.com/gearguide.php
iPodlounge.com is a great site for everythiong