Yup THe creative Zen players do have a GOOD battery life (I get a good 17-20 hours out of my Zen Touch) .
The are known to lock up ocasionally but carriying a opened paper clip and knowing to re-set and go into the service menu and re-build the libary tends to sort that out. (note : had the machine two years and it's locked up twice.)
The only other down side to the zen touch is that it is not directly recognised as a removable hard drive like the iPOD meaning you have to have the drivers on each PC you connect it to. (not too arduoius but does make things tricky for quickly sharing data with your firends machine.