[Forgotten Sanity]

Well I wouldn't necessarily go THAT far -- true, the Creative units are fairly large but I'm not a huge fan of tiny, tiny electronics... at the time that I bought the unit, the Zen Xtra was the only unit that I could find that had an intentionally removeable lid, which held an intentionally removable battery. I also didn't mind the jog wheel for navigation, as opposed to touch pads.

And plus, I've been a fan of Creative since the 8-bit Soundblasters first came out. They were also the first (if I remember correctly) to offer integrated mp3 technology in a cd player, and the first to package and sell a harddrive-driven mp3 player (i-pod was just the first to have an enormous capacity). I respect Creative Lab's pioneering spirit in portable mp3 players, and wanted to go with the one that had had their hat in the ring the longest...

And most importantly, the sound quality on my Zen Xtra is freaking awesome. I don't know how the ipod's is, but I'm sure that if the ipod sounds better, it's only by a marginal difference.