iPod 80GB Classic battery life on higher bitrate?

Battery life is probably affected because the ipod can only load so much onto its RAM every time it spins up the hard drive. Bigger bitrate = bigger size = less songs in the RAM per spin up, but I honestly don't think it'll make THAT much of a difference (although I dont have a new ipod so I couldnt tell you).

I was gonna say that your avatar freaked me out the other day, 5 minutes after killing a fly on my desk I thought there was one on my screen lol.

Theoretically it is affected, but my experience has been that it is negligible at worst. I use mp3 192 VBR, and have yet to even have a full charge on my iPod yet (and i've had the classic since launch and use it daily)! The battery lasts so long, it is really amazing. If you are debating between 128kbps and 192kbps, certainly go with the higher bitrate. You won't compromise battery much at all and the better sound quality is really worth it.