Like a Cell phone, you can do without it until you get one......
Written: Apr 22 '03
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Pros: Endless Music that YOU want to hear. Its not just an MP3 player.
Cons: Ear ache from listening to too much music. :)
The Bottom Line: Prepare to become antisocial! Throw away your car CD changer and go buy a bigger hard drive! A gotta have product.
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| ashmason's Full Review: Apple iPod 2nd Generation 10 GB (PC) MP3 Player |
The Intro
A self proclaimed computer geek, I watched the rise of Napster with interest, and yes I admit even downloaded a few songs myself, especially the older stuff that I remembered from my teens. It was also way cool to snag the exclusive Star Lounge CD content from Star 98.7 Fm (sold out and no longer available) serves em right for trying to make it exclusive!
I did wrestle with the ethics of Napster or similar services, after all this kind of behavior is what killed the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga computers as everyone pirated the games, so there was no profit in making em anymore. So I promptly deleted all my downloaded music. (that’s my story and I am sticking to it)
Still MP3's seemed like a good idea and I came close to buying one but something always held me back. Then a friend got a 64mb attachment for his phone. He happens to love technology but couldn't program a VCR if his life depended on it. So I helped him out and got to see first hand how utterly useless this bit of techno fluff was. It took forever to put songs on it via the USB connection and then it only held a few. Bah, waste of money I thought and got totally switched off the concept....
That was a few years ago, and then a friend came visiting from England and told me he was going to scour the electronics shops for an MP3 player, I told him my opinion and he rolled his eye's and floored me when he told me there were now players with gigabytes of space. Wow..... I got interested.
The Research
First up I need to tell you about the CD changer in my car, it's on its way to the CD changer heaven in the sky. Mounted in the back of my SUV it gets bumped and knocked around, being almost 7 years old doesn't help either. So I was looking at XM radio up until my interest in MP3 players was spiked again. I was specifically interested in something I could fit my entire CD collection on, be easy to use and be firewire compatible. This narrowed my choices as many of the available players use USB, I understand USB2 is pretty damn quick but I don't have it on my old PC, but I do have a Firewire card.
Well my buddy Jeff got one of the cheaper MP3 players and I scoped it out, very cool functionality wise but just seemed too big and clunky for me. Then I took a serious look at the Apple IPod.... hmm, does everything I want, it's small and it's $400!!!!!!!! Yikes.... I picked myself up off the floor after falling out of my chair at the price. Do I want an MP3 player that badly, best wait a bit for the prices to come down methinks.
And then...
I was on a skiing trip and one of the guy's had one, I fiddled with it, weighed it in my hand, it nestled there, not much bigger than an audio cassette, examined it from all angles and knew I had to have it.
Ok, not exactly scientific research here but it's the truth.
And then it happened, I got chatting online to an old friend from school, we lost touch after high school and after 16 years I immediately invited him to visit LA, and he said, how about next month! Anyway, a big Apple Mac fan he had an IPod, then out of the blue asked if I wanted one as he had a contact through his company who could get one at a very reasonable price. To cut a long story short, he made a gift of it to me to say thanks for the invite and the hospitality. Never a one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I let him twist my arm and accepted it.
Ok enough already, on to the nitty gritty..
Look & Feel
Silver casing with a white face, a small clear screen with backlight, five buttons for Menu, FF, Rewind, Play/Pause and select, together with a touch sensitive circle to move the select cursor around. On top of the unit, the headphone jack, firewire port (covered) and button lock slider.
The unit itself feels extremely robust and solid. The buttons have a high quality feel, I think this is going to stand up well to abuse. As everyone else has already said, what the heck were they thinking with the silver. All you have to do is look at it and it gets smudged. Still it is very cool when it’s all polished up.
The 10gig unit also comes with a belt clip case and a remote unit. The IPod itself is a nice size to slip into a pocket, but its heavy enough not to want to put it in a jacket or shirt pocket. So the belt clip case is very welcome. As for the remote, a very neat and simple design with volume, FF, Rew and Play/Pause buttons and a lock button slider.
Lets play some Music
This is the 10 Gig version and will hold approx 2000 songs (my entire CD collection and then some)
Turn the unit on by pressing and holding Play… I said turn the unit on by pressing and hold….. oh right, first make sure the lock button slider is off :) What a great idea, the slider disables the buttons so the unit doesn’t get turned off or on by accident, there is nothing more irritating than bumping against something and having your songs changed for you. Ack…
Once the unit is on, you get a menu of options, you choose the item you want by swishing your thumb around the white circlular thingy, heck you could use your nose, or any other handy appendage for that matter. When you are positioned over the option you want, simply press the round button in the middle of the swooshy circle. So here we go… Swoosh… Browse, select, Swoosh… Genres, Select, Swoosh… Artists, Select, Swoosh… Britney Spea….I mean David Bowie! :) Select, Swoosh… Space Oddity, Select… music starts playing (Swooshing sound effects not included in product!). Ok now that sounded pretty long winded, it’s actually not, and that was one of the longer examples, you can drill down by Playlist you define, Artists, Albums, Songs, Genres or Composers. Once the song is playing, the swoosh circle turns the volume up or down, or if you press the select button will let you scroll through the song. Heading back up through the options is as simple as pressing “Menu” to go back.
Sound quality is excellent, though only as good as the quality of the MP3 file, which you decide. The included headphones are just fine for me, the little in the ear type ones, they actually stay there comfortably for me and I usually have all kinds of trouble. That said, I think I now owe it to myself to get a really nice pair of earphones now. ;)
I listened to music all day, and the battery still had plenty of juice, and would have probably carried me through the next morning had I not charged it again. In short, your brain/ear drums are going to get tired before the IPod will.
In addition there is a graphic equalizer feature where you can select different preset listening profiles. The is however no way to set your own custom one. There are so many choices that this is no big deal for me and I ended up setting it to off anyway.
So all In all playing songs is just fine and dandy, I can find no flaws other than the lack of custom equalizer settings. You can even browse your other music whilst you listen to a track playing. There is also a feature to shuffle by songs or albums, cool!
Syncing with the Computer
And now for the bad news. My friend had pre loaded the IPod with music so I could get going right away. This caused me a whole bunch of headaches when it came to syncing with my PC. The software loaded up and found the IPod, all was going well until I hit the sync button and a box popped up telling me I would lose any music found on the IPod. What?????? Being a Palm Pilot user for years this blindsided me. I mean it should just sync intelligently right? Not so. Anyway the solution was to download some software from IPod lounge and copy stuff manually. Then I had to create my playlists and copy my music into the Music Match software. So I got around it but this software is not at all friendly and definitely the weakest link in the package. Someone not comfortable going out to the internet and downloading stuff would have been stumped.
More bad news, you can keep put all your contacts from Outlook onto the IPod in VCard format. What it doesn’t tell you is that you have to save each contact individually and move it over. Grrr….. again someone created some handy software available from IPod lounge to take the hassle out of this, but if you are expecting plug and play, you will be in for a shock.
The good news is, once you have it all tweaked and running smoothly, you don’t need to fiddle again. Something to keep in mind, if your not technically inclined, you can drag your brother/sister/cousin/next door neigbour, dog, hamster etc to come over and help you set it up and then kick em out.
Don’t forget you need a Firewire port, so be sure to check your PC before getting one. You can buy Firewire cards for a few dollars, anywhere from $30 and up. If you have a firewireless laptop, your probably out of luck though as I don’t know how you would get around that.
Firewire means damn quick, Lets say you want to put your fav CD onto the IPod. Stick it in the CD Rom of your computer, press the record button and sit back. 3 to 4 mins later (CD Drive dpending) your music will be Ripped to your PC in MP3 format. Add it to the playlists on the Music Match software and sync, this is the quickest part, the whole album will fly across there in about 10-15 seconds.
Oh, one thing I should mention. Depending on the age of your PC, you have to budget for a second hard drive. My 18gig drive wasn't big enough. Remember whats on the IPod has to be on your PC.
IPodding in the car
You have several options.
1. FM transmitter, I have one on order that sits in the lighter socket and charges the IPod and powers the FM transmitter. Reviews of this unit are pretty scarce so I will let you know, look for that one coming soon. Basically you find an empty radio station and play the IPod over that, no wires.
2. FM Modulator, The same as the XM radio type solutions. Similar to option one but with much better signal strength. I may end up going this route but means I have to have the modulator installed into the car. Yuk.
3. Cassette adapter, is this not a step backward? I am trying to stay away from this option, especially as not all cars have a cassette deck these days, especially rentals. Luckily both ours do but….
4. Aux in. You lucky dog if you have it. Most OEM head units don’t, or at best it’s at the back of the dash. Doh… This also means you can plug it in to anything with an Aux in socket though, but you will have to go get yourself the connector, it doesn’t come with your IPod.
Conclusion
Why would I pay for satellite radio? Why bother with CD’s that get scratched or end up jumping. The IPod is THE solution for car tunes; I would buy it just on that strength alone. Add to this the ability to carry it around with you, store your contact numbers AND use it as a computer back up device…. Awesome.
As the title says, you don’t know you need this until you get the chance to use one, then your hooked and wonder why you didn’t get one sooner. It’s well worth the price, just think your entire music collection in the palm of your hand, create playlists to suite your moods and at the touch of a button you can crank up some wild tunes, or chill out and get mellow with your honey with the room down parked over the cliffs watching the sunset. (Damn, why did I get rid of m convertible)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 0.00
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Epinions.com ID:
ashmason
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Member: Ashley Mason
Location: Torrance, California
Reviews written: 38
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
Arrrgh, I'm turning into an American!
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