iPod/iRiver/iZen/iWhatever?

Over the past couple of months I've been looking at getting myself a large (40gb) mp3 player. So after much research(endless hours of vague internet searching at work) I decided to definately not get an ipod(I've always been of the opinion that if something needs that much hype/advertising it really can't be that good) then it was creative or iriver. What clinched it for me was that the iriver H340 could record from an external microphone and the creative couldn't, it also plays videos (not a huge concern for me as I just want to listen to music and record any gigs I go to).
So with the decision made I then had to buy it - more expensive than the creative but similar to the ipod. Eventually I got one less than a year old on eBay, and after the obligatory PayPal f#@k ups and the UPS delivery man kept turning up when there was no one in (or was that my wife not answering the door in an attempt to keep any "modern" gadgetry away from me?) I got my sweaties on it.
The guy who had it before me left his music/videos on it in case I wanted any of it. What a load of s#!t some people listen to/watch. Needless to say I reformated the HDD on it then started to recode all my mp3s on my pc down to 128kbps(I had actually started doing this when I first decided to get one) because about 50gb of what's on my pc is all above 192kbps or flac.
Then I thought I'll upgrade the firmware(just because I can). So it was surf on over to the iriver website, download the latest version (1.29) and then install it on my H340, which went like a breeze.
I then downloaded iriverter which is a great little video conversion tool for converting almost any video so it's compatible for the iriver) and got work with that but it wouldn't produce anything playable on my iriver .(Yeh I know I said I didn't want to watch videos, but you gotta have something to show off when you take it to work/round your mates.)
What it didn't say on the website was that if you do upgrade to this version you cant play videos! BASTAS!!
So with a bit more surfing I found an iriver support forum/enthusiast group misticriver which did say don't upgrade past 1.28 if you want to watch videos. So I downgraded to version 1.28 and hey presto they were right. I can now watch Death in Vegas' Dirge video.
Now I 'm happy and my 40 gb iriver is about 85% full after ripping CDs and recoding all my other music. But its' gonna get full soon and if I go to any decent gigs I'll have to start whittling out the stuff I don't listen to much .