I can't speak for the Zaurus, but Ipaq's (at least the 3600 series) have distinct hardware probems with hardware 'pops' at the beginning of songs. FWIW.

Ezekiel, Meatballman, iMaGe,

Interesting. All of the MP3s were encode with a recent LAME. The noises aren't audible on the Empeg or playing from a PC/laptop (or on my old Nomad II). So I took it to be Zaurus software/hardware specific. The noise is like the typical noice of scratching a tonearm over an LP, but shorter in duration and slightly higher pitched and can be very loud/painful (like if you just finished listening to "Love Rears Its Ugly Head" at 11 through the earbuds!). Seems to occur on 50-75 of MP3 transitions on the Zaurus regardless of player software.

The fact that something like this occurs on similar iPaq is interesting. No idea of how the respective units implement decoders and such, but anyway it shouldn't be an issue after a bit if the OGGs continure to be squeak-free.