Thank you Zen Cart team.
This the fourth shopping cart I have installed in the past 2 months while trying to get my photo store up and running.
This is defiantly the best cart I have tried thus far.
If you are searching for a shopping cart please note that you are in the right place as long as you have the time and dedication to install and customize it. (The Zen?).

Other than an issue with installation, taking a few days to sort out, I spend Saturday and Sunday hacking and using this forum to get to my starting point (where I can integrate Paypal checkout and add products). So my time to operation is put at 2 days on a Linux / Apache platform.

Even so, for a cold snowy weekend it was still good fun each step of the way as I knew every that after each obstacle I was on the right route for my goal.

Some of the other carts I tried were :

WebAsyst
Not just a cart but offers a collection of web tools free that could easily be used for a core suite for a small business including a shopping cart. The shopping cart was very easy to getting running as it is all web based and offers a good URL and template customization. Unfortunately this does not support UK Paypal express checkout presently.

Disposablelinks.
Not a shopping cart exactly, but dedicated to download-able products. Disposablelinks allows you to send a download link for a product and specify the number of downloads and or set a time-limit for each download, and best of all you can insert tracking data to allow you to track the legitimate owner of a file in the event of illegitimate distribution. This is reasonably priced but requires that you put the mechanism in place for purchase and emailing the link. Automation looks easy enough and I may still use disposable links driven by my Zen Cart.

Paypal Shopping cart.
Great merchanting tools and facilities but I required more direct control and this required that I write the pages for the products. However the Paypal sites lists over 140 compatible carts and Zen Cart is listed first.

Xcart.
Great cart but expensive. The demo version did not allow me to trial download-able products.

So I am very happy with Zen Cart so far and I managed to find answers to all my issues in these forums or on the FAQs.

I am still running up the learning curve, but I know I have a cart that will support my activities for the foreseeable future.

http:\\african-elephant.co.uk