Dear Interested,
Don't waste any more time; go buy an iPod and be done with it. There is no other hard drive-based MP3 player on the market that even comes close the iPod. And, for those USB 2.0 users, the 3rd Generation iPods DO support USB 2.0 (with purchase of optional cable at a cost of, I believe, $39.95 from Apple's website). Let me just share this with you...
I have an iPod (actually two now, the very first scroll-wheel 5 Gig, and a new 3G 30 Gig), and several of my other friends have iPods. One friend of mine, who didn't already own an MP3 player, and whose only computer was a work-provided Toshiba laptop, decided he would buy an MP3 player. This was about 2 weeks before the new 3G iPods came out, so he was looking at the 20 Gig iPod (which was priced at $399 before the new 3G iPods came out) and anything else that had at least 20 Gigs of storage. I told him to get an iPod (remember this was BEFORE the new 3G iPods came out with USB 2.0 support), but he had the following concerns (basically in his words):
1) I have to buy a PCMCIA firewire card if I get an iPod, whereas my Toshiba laptop already has USB ports (granted, they were USB 1.1 which is slow as f__k when trying to transfer 20 Gigs worth of MP3s...)
2) If I take my iPod somewhere (i.e a friend's house), they probably won't have a firewire card so I won't be able to give them MP3s or copy their MP3s onto my iPod
3) The iPod costs $399 (again, the 20 Gig version), but the Nomad Zen (the 20 Gig from Creative) costs much less (I think it was MSRP of $299, or something like that)
I agreed that he had some well-founded arguments against getting an iPod, none of which had anything to do with the way the iPod looked (superior, perfect, a work of beauty), or the way it sounded (best audio chip/processor hands down), or the navigational ease of the MP3 player's OS (which, I believe, is an EXTREMELY important consideration when you acknowledge that you are going to have to navigate through 4,000+ MP3s on the fly...the way in which you navitgate through the artists, albums, songs, etc. must be as informative yet efficient and intuitive as possible)...
That said, we immediately went to Best Buy (we were out of town and he had to have one right then) and we found the Nomad Zen, open box (Best Buy term for something that's been purchased by someone else, but returned) and I think he paid about $225. I again explained the speed (or lack thereof I should say) of transfering files from his laptop to the Nomad using his laptop's built-in USB 1.1 ports. So, he opted to buy (for $54.99) the PCMCIA USB 2.0 adapter. We walked out of Best Buy with him having spent around $320 or so (including tax) and we proceeded to head back and setup (and play with) the Nomad Zen MP3 player. Now, because I have had an iPod since they were first introduced, I am obviously biased because I am familiar with it, how it works, usage, etc... and when we opened the Nomad, I was immediately disappointed by it's weight. Given the size and weight of the iPod (and the 3G iPods are even smaller and lighter) I had, the Nomad was a brick (even though it is a relatively small MP3 player). I felt "cheaply" made despite its weight and the small, black, thumb-manipulted scroll wheel was a nuisance, forcing you to hold the Nomad Zen in a particular way in order to operate it comfortably (which, was not comfortable for me, and I am 6'6", which should indicate to you that I have fairly large hands). The screen on the Nomad was too small, and only showed a few lines of text at a time, which required more scrolling than I was used to performing on my iPod. I won't go into driver installation issues because that's a problem that can be attributed to his OS, the OS version, and too many other factors to consider, but needless to say, we had a rather unfortunate time installing the drivers and getting the Nomad to work with Windows.
Now, to end, about a week after he bought the Nomad, Apple released the new 3G iPods. I bought one 10 minutes after they were available on the website, and when my friend found out, he immediately returned the Nomad that night and waited until the iPod debuted at the local Apple store and he bought a 30 Gig. I asked him if he had it to do all over again, having owned both the Nomad and the iPod, what would he choose? He just sort of smirked and that was enough...he knew I had been right all along...
Moral of the story? Buy an iPod...