That's too bad about the shipping thing. The Cowon sounds good though, that's why I was in this thread. I have been really happy with my Creatives but I want to look at other brands before replacing them. Nothing like a new tune machine . . . =)

^ this
I used it and it worked fairly well . . . until Vista . . . Vista allowed everything to work but the ripping software . . . instant dual boot to XP install and found every ripping app I could DL after that. Use EAC and Sound Forge now . . . anything better??

Well, i'll be reviving this thread once it arrives and i have tested it. Which reminds me that i really should get those sennheiser ear-muffs back from a mate of mine.

Creative - we play twice as much music as everyone else ;-)

Once you've gotten tinnitus, you don't care that much about sound quality anymore.

okay in that case the choice would be mostly biased against Apple, because tinnitus kicked in the day i joined a band :p

Tinnitus sounds like an awesome name for a metal band.

I have COWON S9 and absolutely satisfied with what I got. AMOLED touchscreen display, APE and FLAC support, FM-radio and a good battery life. The only drawback for me is absence of memory expansion slot, which is why I got 32GB version. Earbuds that come with it are mediocre, but I never expected those to have astounding quality of sound anyway.
Not much Creative players here, almost none. Hence the choice was limited, but I'm content with it.

iPod, you assholes!

I have the Cowon iAudio 7 and am very satisfied with it.
Sound quality is great.
I did have to alter the default settings after buying it as it was way to base heavy in default settings.
Only downside is the way I have to browse through the tree which takes 2 buttons.
It's something you get used to, although it's annoying.
If I buy a new one, it's likely to be a Cowon again.
Cowon offers great support with regular firmware updates and support for a lot of audio and video formats.
The long battery time is a big plus.