After nearly 3 years of faithful service, my 3rd generation iPod died. It wasn’t the battery. It was the hard drive. The hard drive finally decided to check out. I was sad.
For the last 2 or 3 weeks, I’ve been going through iPod withdrawal. Shuttling my music files between home and the studio is a pain. I’ve been using a “portable HD” that I usually use to backup my stuff. Plus, those nights when you want to listen to music before going to bed? Or in the car?
So, it was a choice between an iPod Nano or an iPod (with video). The Nano is very nice. A number of my students have them. However, 4 gigs is just too small. My finale files I transfer back and forth take up nearly 500megs, plus if I wanted to put all my Aebersold play-alongs on there, I couldn’t. So, I decided to go with the iPod. Wow…..
(Update: 02/21 21:00 GMT by E :The Aebersold AACs/MP3s take up about 10 gigs. I don’t have all the playalongs, but I have 85-90% of them)
First off, it “looks bigger”. But it is not. In fact, it is the same width, and the depth is almost half that of my 15 gig iPod. It looks bigger due to the screen. And the screen is absolutely incredible. Clear, color, crisp. Man, in 3 years they have done wonders. I haven’t watched any videos on it, but I imagine they look great.
Sound quality is great. I plugged in the standard headphone and it sounds great. I plugged in my Shure headphones, and it sounds “greater”.
Two bad things. First is the case. It’s really flimsy. I am planning on getting a better case ASAP. I don’t want any scratches. Second bad thing, no dock. My previous iPod came with a nice little dock, this one comes with nothing. They will sell you one for like $40. Um. No. Not right now, thanks.
Rating. 8 out of 10. No dock and a poor case are the two points taken off. They could have at least done a clip case like what came with the 3rd generation iPod. And no dock, that’s just cheap Apple.
Update: 02/28 08:50 GMT by E :Found another interesting thing. When you unplug the headphones while playing, the iPod will put what it was playing on Pause for you. That is a very nice little thing to have.
Eric. Just a suggestion. If you look around at places like Office Depot you might find a leather PDA case that with minimal extra padding will work great with your iPod.
I got one for my twenty gig a couple years ago that serves as my wallet and iPod case, has a hole in the bottom for pluging the charger and folds over the top with enough room to plug the headphones in.
I even found it in the marked down bin. I know there are a million iPod products out there but I never really found one that suiuted my needs so the PDA case with a small sliver of foam rubber down one side
to fill in the extra space still works great for me. I bought a replacement battery recently but haven’t had to put it in yet. I hope my drive doesn’t go out first. XXXX(crossing fingers)
Enjoy your new iPod.
Thanks for the tip!
I have been considering getting an mp3 player of some sort. The iPod is the most attractive choice but I have been reluctant to get one ever since i saw the video where a rep. said it costs almost the same to replace a battery or buy a new iPod (that sentence sounds funny when i say it outloud but hopefully ya’ll know what I mean).
Anyway, I’m not one to buy trendy things but I have read alot of reviews and spoke to alot of people, the iPod gets highest marks…likely b/c it’s owned by the most people. The only thing that has stopped me from buying one is the price. Everyone says it’s worth the money but that doesn’t seem to be enough justification for me.
I’m not knockin it, just wondering if there is any really good reason to get it. I accept seemingly impossible situations as plausible reasoning 🙂
Is there any really good reason to get it? Over what? Are you planning on getting another MP3 player instead of an iPod? So you are going to take some video’s word for how good something is without doing any research? That is just stupid.
For the record, in the 3 years that I used my previous iPod, I never had issues with the battery. And if I did, the cost of getting the battery replaced was around $30. Batteries do not last forever. There is a certain number of charges they can take. Laptop batteries, Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries, Nickel-Cadium batteries. They don’t last forever. If you are really worried about it, you could get Applecare on the iPod, and Apple will fix it for 3 years.
Other reasons to get an iPod video:
But it all comes down to trying it out. Don’t take other people’s words for it. There is a reason why Apple’s iPod is holding something like 70%-80% of the US MP3 player market.