I bought my other half a 30gig iPod for his birthday this year (cost me around $500AUD) and the other day it fell down in between the gear stick in the car and the screen cracked when he changed gears.
He took it to Apple to see if they could fix it and they said they couldn’t because the LCD screen wasn’t a separate part and was all once piece inside. It’s not covered by warranty either because it is ‘self inflicted’ ie. it had to be dropped or hit to end up that way.
So now he can only use it to shuffle songs (or as a hard drive) and there is a big black part in the screen that prevents anything viewable in terms of searching for particular songs/artists etc. And it’s an iPod photo too :'(
So i would definitely recommend getting SOMETHING to protect at least the screen. Not sure what 30gig photo is worth in the states, but a 30 gig hard drive for $500 is DEFINITELY not worth it in my opinion.
My 2 cents
Cheers
Renee