New iPod owner

[quickburst]

OK, I'm a classic rock and roll fan .... bigtime.

I bought my first iPod, it's a Nano 8gig, fifth generation. I'm sure all of that means something to someone.

This has to be the coolest thing I've ever owned. Any more iPod owners out there?

 

[kelltym88]

My oldest son and his fiance' just got me one for my anniversary. Nano 8G 4th gen. I agree, the coolest thing ever. My workouts have been so much better lately.

 

[NJnike]

Yeah I have two actually. My first was a 1st generation iPod Mini, 4GB capacity. Got that one in the summer of 2005 but the battery life is down to only about two hours at this point even on a full charge. As of a few weeks ago I am also the owner of a 2nd generation iPod Touch with 16GB. It is without a doubt my favorite gadget and as the phrase goes, I "don't leave home without it."

And I'm with ya on the classic rock. It's about three quarters of my music library right now.

 

[rocket9005]

When I was in college in the early 80's, I worked in a HiFi store. Our Sony rep predicted that one day that we would have music players the size of a credit card. This was before the cassette walkman came out, so at the this sounded pretty far-fetched. I wonder if Sony was working on this at the tome, but they didn't have the computing power.

Both my my son's have pod touch's, and I adopted one of their orphaned Ipod classics. Very cool.

 

[r1dermon]

i've had a ton of ipods, from the 1st gen nano's, to now, an 8gb 2nd gen touch.

now, i gotta say, the design is very slick, the device itself is a very nice piece of machinery...

but here's my beef with ipods...A. for 270ish dollars, im pretty sure i could've gotten a way larger capacity mp3 player than 8gb...i mean, i have sandisk SD cards that are 16gb and they cost less than this thing.

secondly, the ipod appears very easy to use on the surface, but the problem is, it's like having a car that has the hood welded shut, it works fine when it works, but when you need to do something technical with it, or try to figure out a bug, unless you are really good with their software, it's going to be next to impossible to get it done without bringing it to a "genius", as they call them...

thirdly, they make transferring music SO difficult...im sure it's a concession to the music industry, but it's a major inconvenience, and pretty much makes their itunes software the only place to get music, and locks your computer down as the only thing that can talk to your pod...so if your computer has a problem and gets erased, your ipod is SOL. (well, the data on it is anyway)...and if you have a previous gen ipod, and want to transfer your library to your new ipod, no dice...you have to manually go into windows and show the hidden folders to get to YOUR data.

this is a problem because i dont have the same computer that i did when the ipod first came out, so i ended up eating crow on a lot of music that i bought, and couldn't transfer over (some of the data was lost during transfer, so out of almost 500 legally, fully purchased songs, i got less than half of them onto the new ipod.). luckily i have a lot of the CD's, but some of them got lost or broken...so that's just lost data that i paid for...

short of those major downfalls, the ipod touch is a very unique gadget. out of all the new touch devices, it's by far the easiest to use, and has pretty much the best features.

my next mp3 however, will likely not be an apple product...

enjoy yours though, the nano's are awesome...really compact, yet, they hold a ton of music, and the new ones have awesome video quality. just make sure you keep the computer you set it up with...for as long as you have the pod.

 

[gpoehlein]

I've got a 30 gb 2nd gen classic that I've had for 5-6 years. I still use it all the time and it still works great. I have to say I don't have any issues with iTunes - it works fine for me. I do have my music backed up on a couple of different hard drives so I don't lose any of it, and since you can authorize up to 5 machines at a time, and de-authorize a machine you will no longer use, losing music shouldn't be an issue. One of these days I hope to get either a Touch or an iPhone.

 

[BRC]

Have Ipod(s) and Iphone(s), best thing since sliced bread..Make sure you back up your music to an external drive and you will never have a prob..

 

[n3tjm]

I just use my psp to play music No issues with transferring songs too

 

[FatBoy]

I'm still kinda partial to 8-Track Tapes! (j/k)

I have an iPod Nano, but I also have a Sandisk Sansa Clip that is half the size, plays radio too and most impotantly, has a spring-loaded clip so it can be attached to something. My biggest complaint with iPod is that to clip it to something you have to buy an aftermarket case.

 

[mkadams001]

I have an ipod touch and this is the third ipod I have owned since 2002. The touch is fantastic. I don't use it much for music but more for the applications, email, and videos when I travel. Actually, that was why I bought it was because of the wifi capabilities. It has been a great tool.

I have never had a problem with my music libraries and transferring music between computers and the ipods. Nor have I had any technical problems that reseting the software through itunes didn't resolve but, this has been a rare issue. I would recommend to anyone to consider an ipod.

 

[jj94]

I have a silver 4GB Nano, 2nd gen. 4 gigs is becoming too small for me, and my iPod is starting to break down. I'm hoping to get, not an iPod, but one of the new Zune HD's soon. I love the interface on it, and I've heard that it sounds as good, if not better, than the 2nd gen iPod Touch which is supposed to be one of the better sounding iPods. My dad has a 32GB iPod touch (2nd gen) and I may acquire that instead of buying the Zune.

 

[MaxQ]

Got the 60 gig video/music iPod several years ago for Christmas..

I use it in my car driving to launches, and when staying overnight onsite...

I have the soundtrack from Apollo 13 and the Right Stuff, as well as all manner of sixties spacey music.

Really gets me psyched up...

 

[ZeroID]

Had mine 2nd gen for about two years now but I got it for a completely different reason than all of you ... medical.

I suffer badly with Tinnitus, ear ringing and I use it to go to sleep with. Mid volume music takes my mind off the screaming in my head. The real beauty is that with the touch ring control I can reach under the pillow any time to adjust volume or restart a collection/album if I wake. Don't know any other mp3 device with such user friendly controls. A few tracks is enough to send me off mostly but some nights I can be awake hours on it.

iTunes itself is not the most amenable piece of software but I buy the CDs anyway and rip them to both iPod and mp3 format or flac for the big sound system. And backed up onto a terabyte drive as well.

But it is a magic device as far as I am concerned, my alternative is rather potent sleeping drugs and I think music is a much better option.

 

[chrisudy]

In the house, there are two iPhones, 2 iPod (third generation) - one with a 40 gig HD, one with a 15 gig HD, and an original iPod shuffle.

 

[BsSmith]

I have 2 iPods, a 1st gen. Nano and an 8 gig. Touch.

I never really used my Nano because my internet was slow and it took hours to download a song, and it also took awhile to get song previews. I just recently took all the Wierd Al off of it and updated it. The Touch is so much better, it will run and download songs completely on it's own and I can take it to places with faster Wi-Fi to download my songs and apps. I have spent more money on sogs with my Touch in a month then I have with the Nano over 3 years.

One thing I don't like about iTunes is their song policy, the songs you buy can only be put on 5 computers before you have to buy them again. This is to prevent sharing music, but I'm pretty sure that I will own more then 5 computers in my lifetime. There has to be a better way to do this.

 

[WiK]

One thing I don't like about iTunes is their song policy, the songs you buy can only be put on 5 computers before you have to buy them again. This is to prevent sharing music, but I'm pretty sure that I will own more then 5 computers in my lifetime. There has to be a better way to do this.

Buy CDs.

I got a broken 4th gen iPod off eBay for $15 the other week, should be a fun little project to get it working and take a soldering iron to it's innards.

Am more of a non-iPod person though, my other two mp3 players are a Rio Karma an a Creative Zen Vision M.

 

[gpoehlein]

I have 2 iPods, a 1st gen. Nano and an 8 gig. Touch.

One thing I don't like about iTunes is their song policy, the songs you buy can only be put on 5 computers before you have to buy them again. This is to prevent sharing music, but I'm pretty sure that I will own more then 5 computers in my lifetime. There has to be a better way to do this.

Yeah, but are you talking about more than 5 computers at one time? I only own two. Remember that all you have to do is de-authorize a computer that you are retiring to free up one of those 5 slots. If you are retiring or selling off a computer, you will certainly want to de-authorize it.

 

[dpower]

20G iPod 4th gen here. First ever iPod for me, and still using it. Love the ease-of-use, both the iPod, and iTunes. I use it for music & podcasts to listen to during my commute. I've ripped all my CDs to iTunes (using mp3 format, 192kbps), and it is getting pretty full. I really like how easy it is to control with the click wheel without looking at it. I've transferred the music library to different computers a couple times, no problem. I have 2 computers authorized right now, my daughter has her own iPod nano 2nd gen, with her own iTunes library on a shared family pc (this works just fine with multiple users on Windows). She loves it.

As far as transferring music to new computers, no big deal for me. The only catch to the "unauthorized computer" thing is that if your hard drive crashes, there is no way to unauthorize that computer, until you've hit the limit of 5, at which point there is a way to deauthorize the dead pc. I fortunately had a recent DVD backup of my library, restored it to a new PC, imported into iTunes, and I was back in business. Now that it is 5 yrs old, the battery doesn't hold a charge as long, so that will be an issue at some point. I would recommend occasionally backing up your entire iTunes library onto some DVDs or an external HD.

I'm tempted by the iPod touch, so I could use it as a PDA too, but the loss of the tactile buttons would be a problem, so I'll stick with this one for now.

 

[ttabbal]

Apple has gone to a non-DRM solution, so the limits on number of computers and such don't exist anymore. I don't really buy music from the iTunes store anyway. I have loads of CDs and I prefer MP3 format files as my car and such can play them directly, so I tend to buy from Amazon MP3 and such. Honestly, I've never had a problem with iTunes that I couldn't work out myself. Rarely have I even needed to do more than click a few menu buttons.

And you can easily copy the music back from the iPod, enable disk mode and the files are right there. There are even nice apps to make it even easier if you don't want to deal with the low level file tree.

 

[FlyBoy]

I would buy an iPod if it would let me use Rhapsody.

 

[eugenefl]

I'm tempted by the iPod touch, so I could use it as a PDA too, but the loss of the tactile buttons would be a problem, so I'll stick with this one for now.

I was gifted an 8GB iPod Touch and won't ever look back to anything else. The tactile function was psychologically a very hard feature to overcome. For a long time I didn't trust the interface, and I frequently tap on the wrong letters, but over time I found that I can knock out Emails with ease since I don't have to physically depress a button. The QWERTY character layout is standard. The word/spell autocorrect feature is very useful and occasionally I have to go back through and proof read before hitting the "Send" button. The primary uses, in order of preference: Podcasts, Rent movies via iTunes or rip personally owned favs (I fly every weekend), web browsing/Email (via free wifi hotspots), portable photography portfolio, MP3s in the car via AUX port, and lastly games. My iPod Touch is sync'ed with my work Exchange account and keeps all of my contacts handy.

Once the iPhone is divorced from AT&T I will run, not walk, to the nearest Apple store and buy an iPhone. I look forward to being able to use data/cellular dependent apps (i.e. - Google Maps) and have Email handy wherever I go. Being a photography buff, I absolutely look forward to the internal camera on the phone and the apps for photo editing.

I currently have a Samsung ACE issued by my employer, but find it to be very slow and clunky. I think this is attributed to the Windows Mobile 6 software on the phone and the very limited internal memory. I use it primarily for phone calls and Email when I'm not near a wifi hotspot where I could otherwise use my iPod Touch.

 

[rkt2k1]

I would buy an iPod if it would let me use Rhapsody.

There is a free Rhapsody application available for the iPod Touch and iPhone.

... Bill