First, apple is a first class company with first class products, so you are paying extra for that. Their products seem like a genius engineered them, compared to other companies its some kid or person in a 3rd world country sometimes.
From personal experience, with me owning an iPod, and have for sometime now, and also owning an Photo and a 4th Gen Mini, have found their battery life is quite accurate compared to their competitors. I would find someone who has the other product and see what they think of the battery life.
Second, Apple has the NICEST and EASIEST interfaces, I seriously think they design stuff for handicapped people sometime, because compared to learning windows, I think a newborn could figure it out in a few days!
Third, DO NOT USE WMA, I personally prefer MP3 or the AAC from apple is nice too. WMA promises the same quality at half the bit rate, but as most people know Microsoft. When they say, "Seriously, Windows XP is really secure, especially using Internet Explorer..." I often times wonder what they actually use in their labs to lock down their source code besides a sheet of paper in a vault.
Forth, Apple has this things called "Apple Care", their warranty is great, if anything goes wrong their policy is, "Here is a new one, sorry for the problem." From personal experience, I dropped my iPod, and tried taking it apart to see if I could fix it, which actually destroyed the audio jack plug in the process. Popped it back together and took it in anyways, approx 1½ months AFTER warranty expired. Yes, I actually left the store with a NEW (Refurbished Probably) iPod!
Last, This is a somewhat biased opinion leaning toward apple, but I think ANY apple product owner would probably agree with me.
Go for the iPod MINI! If we are lucky, the google ad words will pick up iPod and you can maybe find a cheaper place to purchase the iPod through.
