Mini iPod

One of the girls in the office has just returned from the US with one. Haven't listened to it or played with it - but it looks like a very nice bit of kit. I think I may have to buy one. She paid £150 for it from the Apple shop in New York.

 

???

:SLEEP:

 

Way too expensive, and way too big.

Compared to the bottom of the range proper iPod in the US the price is $250 vs. $299, a $50 saving for something that's only marginally smaller and has just 4Gb instead of 15Gb of storage space.

You said, one of the girls in the office got one? That kind of sums up my opinion of it: iPod for girls

Michael.

 

They are a great little device and the least expensive four gig model currently on the market.

 

A good point - in terms of storage, I'm looking for about 60GB, as my entire CD collection as it stands is about 42GB, so 60GB will give some room for growth. The only player that offers that at the moment is the Zen.

I'd ideally prefer an iPod, as it also has the basic calandar/notepad facilities that my old Palm IIIe offers - I use it for nothing else. However, current prices are a little steep at the moment.

However, I'd ditch the supplied headphones and use something like Senn PX-100s - they've given my NetMD player a decent boost.

£198.57 - current dabs.com price is also a rip-off for the iPod mini, when I could get a Zen with 30GB for £40 more.

 

A good point - in terms of storage, I'm looking for about 60GB, as my entire CD collection as it stands is about 42GB, so 60GB will give some room for growth. The only player that offers that at the moment is the Zen.

I'd ideally prefer an iPod, as it also has the basic calandar/notepad facilities that my old Palm IIIe offers - I use it for nothing else. However, current prices are a little steep at the moment.

However, I'd ditch the supplied headphones and use something like Senn PX-100s - they've given my NetMD player a decent boost.

 

Yes as usual in the UK we are being screwed, its such a shame.

I am off to America in May, with the current exhange rate I am thinking of all those things I don't really need!

 

The iPod Mini is not aimed at those who want 60Gb HDD's. But rather at the 'high-end' of the 'flash' players.

just my 2p!

Cheers.

 

Yes I have to say life is too short to rip my entire CD collection to a big iPod. I'd probably only want a few dozen tracks on it. I'm quite picky about what I listen to when I'm on the move, I just prefer my all-time faves rather than listening to whole albums.

I can relax to the whole album at home.

Plus I'd be soo pissed off if I copied 300 CDs to it and then I lost it!

 

Agree about loosing all 300 CDs - I only finished ripping all of mine (over 500!) about 2 or 3 weeks ago onto the PC - the plan being if I ever went contracting overseas, I could carry a laptop + hard disk and my entire music collection.

Think I'll wait for a bit and see what happens price-wise with other players. I'm quite happy with MiniDisc as a format for now.

 

Nice thing about the iPod (I have the 15gig model) is that I can rip to HD and then download what I feel like listening to to the pod. In practise, I tend to download entire albums and then create playlists on the go as it were. It's a very flexible and quite a powerful way of using and choosing what you want to hear. As I keep the music on a 200gig Sata HD I can (should I choose to) stream it round to the various PCs in the house as well. There will soon be a dedicated TV /PC connected to the main system, too (looking for a nice Accuphasey case )

 

That sounds quite good then!

Have to say though after a particular incident on a train back to Norwich I've always been wary of using such devices.

There I was sitting on the train to go home at Liverpool Station, earphones in and music pumping away from my minidisc. Then all of a sudden everyone gets up and bundles off the train. There I am on my own, sitting wondering what the hell was going on.

There had been an anouncement over the train that it was broken down and everyone had to bundle onto the next train.

I managed to squeeze myself on as the last passenger.

never really been comfortable since!

 

I aslo have the 15Gb model. It's superb in the car too. I have to use a cassette adaptor as my car has the cd changer built into the head unit and so doesn't have another spare input.

Loads of music on tap for long journeys on the UK's marvelous road system.

 

...oh, ...just another thought....

unlike cassette/CD cases, the ipod is not so good for scraping ice off the windscreen.

 

Snigger.

When I re-installed my harddrive I downloaded a little programme to extract all the tunes off the ipod back into itunes (very very handy)

However with constant access going on an hour it was so hot I put it on a bag of frozen peas, that would melt ice!

The good thing about all these little devices ipod, gen etc is that they are a harddrive, it is so handy for back up.

 

I've had a 40gb iPod since they first came out (and a 30gb before that) and I still think it's pretty cool but for anyone thinking of getting one these observations may be useful:

1) The volume on the European models is capped due to some stupid French law.. for many this makes the iPods too quiet for use in gyms, aeroplanes and city Streets. However their is a great little app that someone has made than can get over this with no drawbacks whatsoever:
http://www.ringom.no/espen/ipod/

2) The headphones that come with it are crap. No bass. The new mini iPods come with better headphones that have bass and are very acceptable for MP3s. There is really no need to buy any other bud type phones. If you do buy other headphone be careful that the iPod can drive them cos the ouput stage is not that powerful and volume levels can be reduced even further.

3) If you use only high quality mp3s (as i do), perhaps ripped at 256 as a minimum (I use --alt-extreme), the battery can last for as little as five CDs!

4) As with mp3s and music held on computers in general playlists become much more important than listening to whole CDs as they are so much more configurable and useful (cuts out the crap tracks, better suited to moods etc). There is no real point in trying to load your whole CD collection onto an iPod.

5) The sound quality of the iPods is actually quite good (for mp3 players)! I've made head to head comparisons with the iRiver, Zen and ArChaos offerings and the iPod sonic quality wins hands down, easily.

5) If you want to use it in the car the iTrip works really well and can be got (barnd new) through eBay. In addiotn the iTrip will allow you to play the iPod through any radio receiver if you place it next to it. However, if you want as good sound quality as possible in your car you can get an adaptor for your CD player input for many car models especially for the iPod here:
http://www.ihavetohave.it/acatalog/ICE-Link.html
..while stocks last....

6) The line out of the iPods is much better for driving hifi than the headphone out. Many other mp3 players do not have a line out.

Summary.
The iPods are very pricey and have lots of flaws but i am mostly happy with mine (although I have discovered that Apple are a bunch of sharks!).
I have dowloaded loads of music that it is very hard to track down in any other format and the iPod has become essential for listening to this.
The sound reproduction quality is surprisingly good if you use good quality mp3s (ripped with EAC and encoded with Lame 3.90.3 or 3.92 with a --alt-extreme setting for instance).

Anyway, just thought i would share with you the knowledge i have gained over the last few months as you lot have been so kind as to share yours with me.

 

I got my iPod in the US so I don't have the volume issue. I doubt very much that it's a French law btw that restricts the volume in European iPods. If it's the result of any law it's likely to be an EU law but who knows what the real story is behind this one.

Battery life on the iPod is pretty poor allthough perfectly OK for what I need it for. I mainly use mine for listening to music in the office when I'm in London where I have it hooked up to the mains anyway. It's true though that the higher the quality MP3 you use the less the batter lasts because the hard disk has to be accessed more often.

I never even bothered with the headphones that came with mine (they're still sealed). My Sony EX70s do an excellent job

As far as sound quality goes, I find it quite a lot better than my Sony MiniDisc player and better than any portable CD walkman I've ever used.

Playlists though - I don't get it. What is it with playlists? Who the hell has time to compile them? I usually listen to entire CDs on my iPod . At best I might listen to music by "Genre" or just random selection.

The "Smart" playlists the iPod has (where you can set criteria a song has to meet and all songs meeting them are automatically included) are an excellent idea but even with that I haven't been able to think of criteria that I would use. I know my music by albums, so that's how I listen to it.

Michael.

 

It'a French law that Apple deemed fit to apply to all Europe (as it's such a small insignificant place!). It is not an EU law. Apple are very hard pushed to even admit that the EU iPods are volume restricted (one of the reasons that I really hate them and why I returned my original 30gb iPod). There are lots of threads about this on the Apple forums which you can read at your leisure (if you really want to!).

That's unfortunate as you really have missed the best thing about computer based music (IMHO). They are very simple and very quick to make. I make them via Winamp just by queing the tracks i want to listen to and then saving them as a titled playlist that i then import into my iPod (all other PC based music player programs can ouput playlists too). I don't use iTunes BTW, but i am sure it can do this quite simply too.

For instance I have playlists called (small selection):
70's alternative
Punk
New Wave
Prog Rock
Kraut Rock
Psy Trance
Psy Ambient
I've Just Gotta Dance
Soppies
70's Pop
80's Pop
Synth Rock
Space Music
The Stones
2004 newbies

Not to mention the audio books.

Basically you are building your own compilations. Some of them can be very long indeed... and when used with the shuffle facility on the iPod can last for days (assuming you do other stuff inbetween!).

Ther are very very few albums i want to listen to all the way through.

 

By "taking time to compile them" I didn't mean the physical process of putting the songs into a playlist (which is quick and easy with iTunes), it's the selection of what should go into it

Michael.

 

Live a little! Be daring... just go for it!.
Stick a quickly organised playlist on shuffle and you may surprise yourself!