i have a 11 month old zen vision m (30gb) and finding music and the whole menu system is so much easier and better than an ipod. sounds great and survives being dropped!! as soon as they get a 80gb zunephone (hopefully without touch screen, They are cool but annoying and slow) that will be worth a look.
I had xp on both laptop and pc, but decided to update both, i have had no problems that couldn't be fixed within 10 mins, some games run better (cod2) and some worse Supreme commander. the benifits, searches, navigation and windows software really do work well if you have an ok pc its alot better.
AMD 4200X2 (939), 3gb ram, inno3d 7600gs 256mb