This ZEN is awsome! It's headphones are so comfortable I can sleep with them in...and when they don't come out in the night i don't wake up with sore ears. I've had no problems with it and it's many USEFULL features make it quite nice to use. The vertical touchpad is easy to use and it's wide music support allows for great flexibility. Why should you buy this over say an iPod? Simple. Creative Lab's design and construction are so durable that when my friend dropped his ZEN in his pool after drying it out all he had to replace was the hardrive which was significantly cheaper than buying a new one. Also storage space. True a basic iPod can hold 30 gigs while this zen only holds 20, but since Zens are compatible with WMA formating (half the space of an MP3) it can hold twice as many songs if you use WMA formatting, which is readily available to everyone with Windows Media Player.