Creative Zen Touch vs Zen Xtra

[usernamenumber]

I have decided that I'd like to get an mp3 player and I think I've narrowed it down to the Creative Zen Touch or Zen Xtra (probably a 40GB model). iPods are more expensive and less linux-friendly and the iRivers, while they look really nice, are just out of my price range. There is about $80 difference between the touch and the xtra but I'm having trouble deciding whether the features of the touch justify the higher price tag. There's a lot of other stuff I could spend $80 on or I could get a 60gb xtra for the price of a 40gb touch. So I'd like to list the big features of the touch based on what I've read and invite people who own one or the other (or both!) to comment in case I've missed something that should be important in my decision. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

The main things I've read that are supposed to justify the price:

1) New touchpad is supposed to make navigation faster/easier, though I've read that it's actually a real pain to use accuraely.

2) Has more accessories: Most notably a remote control/fm tuner, which could get around problems with the touchpad but that adds $50 to the pricetag

3) It is a bit smaller than the xtra

4) Has longer battery life (24hr vs 14-- I'm not sure I'd ever exhaust a 14 hour battery so it may be a moot point)

5) Being a newer model than the xtra I assume that it just has more usability tweaks in general than the older model


So, have I missed something? Anyone care to share their opinion on which would be the better purchase? Are the above features good enough to justify the extra price?

Thanks so much to anyone who can help.

 

[curious_jon]

Another issue to consider is how the software works. You might want to see if you can try before you buy. A friend of mine picked up two of those things and was not able to browse through his music files the way he wanted to and without contacting the Creative Zen tech folks returned them both. The software built into alot of these devices wants to sort your files for you by genre. If you have much experience with Mp3's, you may know that many of them are either mislabled or not labled at all. There may be a way around this problem that we didn't explore, but impatients ruled my friend's decision to return both Zen's.
Check out my post - Mp3, WAV - player, recorder - FM Trnasmiter