So I went for it and picked up an 8gb Fuze and an 8gb expando, which cost 125 bucks shipped together and arrived 2 days after the night I ordered (amazon)
Basically... only now do I know just how crappy my stolen zen vision really was.
I've got a converter to get an aux in into the trunk of my car where the optional cd changer hookup is. with the zen, I could only run out of it at about 50% volume, because any higher and it would start to distort, which means when I was listening through the player, I'd have to turn the volume way up to get a normal listening level, and it sounded fine, but it was clear that the SQ was way better running cd's through stock dash deck.
Not so with the fuze. I can run it at full power out of the player so that it matches the volume of the built-in cd player with no distortion (apparently the pre-amp in in the trunk is pretty high impedance and the zen just couldn't drive it), no loss of bass (that I can tell) and sitting in the parking lot I couldn't tell any difference in SQ between the cd player and the fuze, so on the road it'll be a non-issue.
and now I've got a decent portable whether I'm driving or flying. good stuff. It's almost as if the guy who smashed my window for my crappy old zen did me a favor.
almost.