I wanted to update one of my earlier threads on this issue, but for some reason that thread is now locked (I'm not sure why) so I'll just add a new post to get this information out since it may help some other people.
As per Chris M.'s suggestion in another thread, I tried doing a full restore with the latest iPod Manager (the same one I used to update to 2.0.1.) I'm happy to report that this worked -- it solved 'almost' all the issues I was having with songs getting cut off (thanks Chris.) The CBR songs that were ending early now play to the end -- including the really troublesome songs (like the entire Squirrel Nut Zippers album "Perennial Favorites) that ended early even when I used another application to rip/encode them. All of these now play to the end and I didn't have to re-rip/encode any of them.
The VBR songs behave much better now as well. However, they still cut just a bit more off than the same song encoded with CBR. It's a minor difference, but on songs that have a recognizable sound right on the seam, the VBR encodes clip just a little bit, whereas the CBR encodes simply have the standard mp3 gap without losing any of the actual song. I'm confident that this is an iPod issue -- which will hopefully be addressed with a future firmware update. In the mean time, I'm just happy that the problem with CBR encodes is apparently completely solved.
One side note: When updating, I kept getting a "can't mount iPod" message at the end of the restore. I finally solved this by UNchecking the "enable disk mode" box when doing the restore. This seemed to make the difference since the next restore finished normally. When the restore was done, I re-checked the "enable disk mode" box and all seems well now.
Thanks again to the people who responded,
Larry