I've had my iPod for about 5 months now and it has served me well. A couple of times it has had issues. Here are a couple of tricks to help with the management and recovery of my iPod.
Recently my screen froze when I tried to select a song. It froze with the backlight on and I wasn't able to change navigation or hear anything. To fix this I help down the Select button and the Menu button at the same time for about 5 seconds. This resets the iPod and broke the freezing screen.
I've never been a big fan of iTunes. When I got my iPod I thought I'd give iTunes a shot. It crashed a couple of times before I gave up completely. I found that Winamp handles the management of my iPod great and is a lot more lightweight than iTunes and is something I have constantly used.
Another alternative to iTunes is Songbird