More about the Creative Zen
I've had it for a few weeks now, and I like it. The screen is very nice, and it's pretty easy to use. I started using my Shure e2c earphones with it, and it sounds pretty good. The Windows software is good when it works, though the Explorer extension that appears in My Computer crashes quite a lot, taking explorer.exe with it - not good. A couple of minor issues are that on some MP3s there is a sort of crackling noise that appears - I'm not sure if it's a certain audio frequency or a problem with the way the MP3 is encoded that causes it, and I haven't really investigated it. Also, normally I have it on shuffle and I leave it unlocked so I can skip things I don't want to listen to, but if you don't lock it the screen stays on all the time, which eats battery life.
I haven't used its video capabilities yet, nor have I done much with its photo handling (although the first time I plugged it in, it copied most of the My Pictures directory over). You do need to be quite careful with ID3 tags though, otherwise you get lots of songs called by from the album .
As for Linux compatibility, I have been using Gnomad2 to handle it, which is a little quirky but works well enough. Both this and the Windows software allow you to pull files off the device (unlike iPods or Sony devices), which is nice.
Overall, I'm happy.