You realize that the "18 month battery" thing was mainly relegated to a small portion of the 3rd gen iPods, which was out almost three years ago, right? The only reason it got trumped up was because of that stupid video of those guys vandalizing iPod ads in New York. I have a 3rd gen iPod myself, and while it's battery certainly doesn't hold the exact same charge as it used to, it still lasts several hours, after three years. Lithium Polymer batteries, as used in the new iPods, will easily last for 3 years and still retain the majority of their charge, if taken care of properly.

No, I don't think he meant the life span of iPod batteries, but it's capacity. Most users will be lucky if they can get 8 hours out of it.

I'd say that's patently untrue, especially of the fifth generation. If you're letting the backlight turn off and listening to albums or playlists (not skipping around every five seconds) you will easily get close to the "rated" battery life of the iPod. For the 30GB that means 14 hours of music, for the 60GB that's 20. For the nano this is especially true, as there's no physical mechanism to spin up to access other tracks.

Hmm, from what I have heard and read from various online sources, most people won't get above 8 hours on a battery-drain test, which is like you said, just let the player play without any interference. On the other hand, I did a battery-drain test with my Zen Touch, and after 24 hours of non-stop playing, it still one bar of battery left, so I just stopped it.

Wow 24 hours? Now I see a major reason why Zen is better.

My iPod's battery was almost dead when I got home one day from school, and I wanted to drain it completely and then recharge completely, so I left it playing on my bed with a slideshow and music on. It managed to do that for a couple of hours still... I was actually surprised at that. But I'm not complaining :-D

I decided on a Creative Zen for the battery life alone, basically. What I didn't realize until after getting it, was that it allows a wider range of music formats (wma, mp3, etc.), where, apparently, iPods only work with mp3s. I pretty much have only mp3 files, but there are still the few wma files that I wouldn't want to go without, and with iPods, you have to do everything through iTunes, where with Creative Zen, you can just as easily use Winamp, or any other music program.

When it comes to playing videos... I use both my computer and my television. There's no need for a 2" by 2" screen to squint upon just to view what I want to watch. The Creative Zen I bought doesn't even play videos, for that matter (basically cuts $100 off the price, while keeping the same amount of space, etc.). Pretty much the only problem I faced was losing the backlight due to dropping it about a week after getting it (due to the dimensions of the one I got, basically).

No offense... but you're posting the most ridiculous BS I've ever read on MP3 players. The iPod is (in)famous for its (nearly exclusive) support of M4A/AAC, in addition to ALAC (lossless in m4a container), AIF (Apple equivalent of WAV), WAV, and of course the ubiquitous MP3. Whereas the Zen only supports WMA, WAV, and MP3.

Also, the screen of the iPod and Zen Vision:M is 2.5" diagonally, which is surprisingly large.

I have the 30 Gig Creative Zen Vison M and I must say it is well worth the price. I don't know if it is superior to Ipod or not, it depends on what you use it for. The 30 Gig Ipod Video has better battery life when playing music by a couple hours, but the Zen has about 4 hours of battery life for video (about 2 times more than the Ipod) The Ipod Video is thiner than the Zen. The Zen has a microphone, it also freezes a bit more often than it should. I don't know about the Ipods menu system so I wont go into that except on the Zen you can create your own background with images from your computer (for those that like that kind of thing) Overall they are both really great devices, I only decided on my Zen because it was $50 off due to it being open box.