^ My housemate has a zen as well, and she has had a whole slue of problems with it. I looked into getting one before I got my ipod (it was my first apple product), and my research turned up a lot of terrible things about their customer service, the short battery life, their tendency to just die for no reason while you are listening, etc. Overall, people just seemed to not be very happy with them in the long run.
I ended up going with Apple because it was the only player that people had minimal problems with, and for the most part when they experience difficulites, Apple Customer Care dealt with it. But it doesn't hurt to look around at other options as well.