And there you have it people, from Mark Thorpe!
Well, in my personal experience, Creative Zen and the iPods are competing mp3 players nothing more. the iPod has some extra features here, and the Creative Zen has some there. But as far as iPods being overratted, I laugh at that everytime I hear it, because it's SOO untrue. They've come out with new iPods and they're better then the older ones, which is most likely where the stereotyping came from. So really, do you research and stop asuming that the ipods now adays suck, if anything they're both (Creative Zen & the iPod) worthy competers of each other.
Now, the 10 hours on a charge, is also something to laugh about, I get about 20 on a charge, and the only reason a Zen gets more, is because it's less slim so they have more room for a bigger battery. As far as itunes sucking, I guess thats just a personal opinion, but I find it very clean and easy to use compaired to windows media player which was just very messy.
Oh and I've got black and it's really nice, and my friend has the white one, the only thing is you can see dust on the black one, and all the scratches and stuff are harder to see, but with the white one, the scratches are easyer to see as well it it would be easyer to see dirt and stuff. So go black, plus it's cool
Chris