Re: some mp3 player questions
 

i have heard creative has the worst reliability record. plus their designs are poopy if you care about ui and stuff like that. the ipod is a pleasure to use and navigate with and if and w hen you h ave 60gigs on your thing, that really helps.

ipod HAS to be used with itunes so if that is an issue you might think about it. ummmm, ya. ipod is always nice too cause now they make accessories for everything under the sun for it. if you are into hacking you can load linux on it and make it do fun stuff like recording audio and other stuff...

Re: some mp3 player questions
 

I am extremely biased cos my hubby works for 3DLabs, which is a subsidiary of Creative, so we get employee rates. Having said that, I have always found my Creative MP3 players reliable, easy to use and highly functional. I currently have a MuVo with only 512mb of memory, but that is more than enough for my purposes - approx 8 hours of music. They are available in larger capacity I think. And it is about the size of two cigarette lighters, not a brick!

The plus, too, is that you can upload stuff from it back onto your PC, which, I understand, you cant do with the iPOD. This can be useful as a general data transfer key as well as for swapping music around the place. I also like the fact that it plugs straight into your USB port, no cable.

And they come in pretty colours ;)

Can't comment on any other brand cos I don't know enough about them.

Re: some mp3 player questions
 

some of the creative models do have build issues.

you can use it with Winamp also.

it can also now finally record 44.1khz stereo WAV. nice!

Re: some mp3 player questions
 

if you are into hacking you can record at 96khz apparantly ( i haven't done, just read that linux supports that. )

Re: some mp3 player questions
 

There are many third part alternatives to itunes. I use ephpod, it's simple and free.