I’ve now joined the masses whose iPod batteries crapped out, so now my spendy little portable music player plays only half the songs I’ve downloaded into it and always says the battery is empty. I took it to the Apple store, where the helpless clerk informed me that that’s pretty much the way it goes, that Apple wasn’t forthright in saying their players crap out at some point, and that I’ll have to spend a ton of money to fix this mess (after standing in a long line at a different Apple store, because of course this one will forever be out of batteries, they’re in such high demand).

My question is, has anyone had success dealing with this infuriating iPod situation? What’s the best (and ideally cheapest) way to fix this junk?