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Apple iPod Touch or something else entirely?

What $400 can get you at the Apple store, or any store.

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Candace Lombardi
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
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Candace Lombardi
Steve Job introducing the iPod Touch.
Would you rather have this iPod Touch or something better? Ina Fried/CNET News.com

Today Apple refreshed its iPod lineup, introducing four iPod options in the process. For roughly $400 you can buy a 16GB iPod Touch with Internet capability, a 160GB iPod Classic or a combo of iPod Shuffles and Nanos.

But you could also splurge on something else entirely.

Overheard here at CNET, ideas include:

• 100 dozen doughnuts.

• One-way plane ticket to Paris.

• Hire a dog walker.

• The Beatles albums on vinyl.

• Garmin eTrex Vista HCx GPS receiver, plus a high-capacity microSD card.

• A newly cheaper iPhone.

• An external hard drive with more space to store music so I could switch out songs on my smaller, cheaper music player.

Of course, as a friend points out, all those doughnuts would require a lot of exercise. For your exercising, you might want an iPod. And the long trip to the City of Light might also be boring without an iPod to use on the plane.

So, what would you do with $400? Would you buy an iPod or something else entirely? And if so, what?

We'll update our list from CNET staff here, as you add to the talkbacks.