MP3 players (ipod & Zen) with mix cd's

HI there

I was just about to order one of the new ipods and there seems to be a problem with mix cds, and as this is probably 90% of my driving music I am trying to get a bit more info.

The ipod apparently puts a gap between tracks, there is an option to merge all the tracks into one but then the hard drive spins constantly (instead of 15 secs every 20mins) and this obviously kills the battery life. And also because there is 20meg ram once that is empty you get a pause anyway while the drive spins up and fil the memeory with the next 20meg worth of music.
Why the guys at apple can't get it to spin up just befor the buffer emties I don't know.

While trying to hunt out some info I saw someone post that his Zen 20gig doesnt do that, now if that is the case then I will go with the Zen unit but can anyone confirm this ?????

thanks in advance

G