Ode to My iPod

Oh, how I love thee--well, most days, that is, when your battery isn't acting up.
It's really a fantastic invention the iPod. Even if it is one of the oldest models possible. I have an iPod Mini. "A what?" you may ask. I repeat, a Mini. It is the predecessor to the Nano. It's quite a bit bulkier than the first Nano models, and even more so than the latest Nano. Like the Nano (at least one of them) it holds 4 gigs, but now about 2 1/2 years old, and is showing its age. I hate to upgrade because that would mean I would have to actually pay for an iPod. You see I got this one for free as part of the incentive program at Franklin Covey where I worked 2 1/2 years ago. I got a Nintendo Game Cube too--both are now pretty much obsolete, but I gotta say that MarioKart is still pretty fun, but I digress.
It's like an old pet too, we've been through good times and bad, it's loyal, pretty dependable, sometimes it's gotten into trouble (read, somehow lost all 1000 songs on it, luckily I had backed them up a month before). However, sometimes lately (actually for about six months) the battery just gets really weird, in that it can be charging for hours, and then I play it and it shuts off because of "low battery power." Then I have to spend about 10 minutes playing with it for it to work, and it's good to go for a few hours, provided I don't play around with it too much. It tends to work fine for when I go to the gym, and for my rides to and from work, and once I am here, I plug it into my charger and it runs like a champ.
So, returning to the pet analogy, I guess it's just ailing, and it's not yet time to put it down. But, my desire to have the latest and greatest kinda makes me want to euthanize this puppy and get an 80 gig classic iPod--that and the fact that I magically aquired a substantial amount of music files from a friend, means that I can't hold them all on my Mini. So I am torn. Thoughts?