I've used a Creative Zen Xtra for the past 9 months. It's just as flawed as the iPod (in terms of uploading music to it), but has a better user interface (playlist creation most noticably). Yeah, it's a bit bigger and isn't as 'cool' as the iPod, but do you care? It's a hell of a lot cheaper.
Mine freezes up occasionally now though, I'm trying to return it for an iRiver H340. FAR better player than either of those mentioned above, research it.