Creative > Apple in terms of music.

My Creative Nomad Zen NX 30gb has far superior sound quality to any iPod, longer battery life, and I mean MUCH longer. Oh, and it's a lot cheaper, heck the one I've got is about a year old now, they have brand new ones out and they're STILL cheap. Mine broke a total of once, and I just sent it back under the year warranty, and they sent me back a whole new one, box and everything with a brand new reinstated year warranty.

iPod battery life drops to about 20 minutes after a year, and to replace it, you have to send it back to apple along with your bank details so they can just drain your whole account to pay for the stupidly expensive battery.

My Nomad on the other hand, I flip open the front of the case, take out the battery and replace it with a new one that costs about £10.

WINNAH.

I have 11gigs of music, expanding at an ever increasing rate now I can download music, so I can fill my player easy enough.

That and it functions as a poor man's External HD, so I can copy any kind of files I want onto it, unlike the iPod which is just for music, pictures and text files.

Also, I heard that Apple push old ladies down the stairs while cackling over their new iPod money making schemes.