Yeah, i-River is a good company, and especially good for recording using the recorder since they contain line in's for MIC's, yet the H10 has missed out on this, with an extra attachment needed if you want to do it.
The Zen's have all the rest of the features though. Voice recorder, FM radio (record), and plays WMA's. Though I don't see the hype in WMA. They arent noticably better in quality, and use up so much battery life on players, alot don't bother implementing it, though its no where near as battery hungry as the uncompressed format i've just forgotten the name of...
The only problem I have with ZEN's unles they've fixed it now is the software you have to use to import music to the device (since its used to catorgarise Album/Artist/Genre, etc, and you can't even listen to the music on your computer from the player, unless you use the built in player on the Creative program which would of course lack the features of Windows Media Player or Winamp
Other than that, Creative players are very good, and definietly beat I-Pods...
Heck, any player beats an I-pod in my opinion... well, I'm sure there are a few that don't, but you know...not many.
Now there are some really good players around now, and companies have gotten to grips with how to make a good player, what they really need to seriously aim for is a higher battery life. I don't think for any player 14 hours is good enough for something that can hold 5,000+ songs... meaning if you listen to music all the time, like me, your going to be recharging it alot.
I mean, would it be hard to have a bigger battery? Or a removable one in all players?
If its just fashion stopping this from happening, its stupid, since whats more important, it looking slim and "fashionable", or having a very weak battery where you can only listen to music for short periods?
I mean, it wouldn't add that much extra depth to have a 24+ hour battery i'm sure.
Though, if you look at what people have said about the new Creative Zen Vision: M against the Apple Ipod Video, with only a few milimetres of depth difference, you realise how stuipid people can be. If it can fit in the pocket, whats the damn problem?!!!