Darkmistress's Full Review: Apple iPod shuffle 2nd Generation Blue (2 GB) MP3 ...
Several months ago my husband got a gift certificate to Shinseagae for the parents in his class. This is a verboten practice at our school, but what are they going to do, fire us? Anyway, he had decided that he wanted a Shuffle because he wanted to take songs he was learning to school and listen to them during breaks. He chose blue because he figured it would be more difficult to lose.
After trying to use it for about 2 weeks he gave it to me in disgust.
Now, I love Apple products. I am a definite Apple partisan, but this thing ain't so great. And I liked the look of it before he bought his. I thought I could pack all the music I wanted to hear on it for the trip overseas and not have to carry a bunch of CDs. Bah! I was so naive.
The Shuffle is small. I guess about an inch and a half by and inch. It has a circle on the front which makes up the controls (snort!). Along one side are the power switch and the shuffle switch. I recommend you just turn on that shuffle switch and save yourself some aggravation. It has a clip on the back which is impressively flexible. I didn't realize how impressive until last Monday when I decided to clip it to my winter coat lapel, my suede and lambskin winter coat lapel, and it fit. It came with earphones which my husband says work just dandy for him. I have small ear canals so those kinds of earplugs hurt my ears. I have a set that hang on the shell of my ear and they work nicely. It also came with a docking station that you plug into the computer to recharge it and sync the playlists.
It stores an impressive 10 hours of music. Honestly, if the thing worked the way I wanted it to that would be enough to keep me entertained for a good long time. In fact 10 hours is about how long the battery lasts so in theory you could get all the way through your playlist once before you needed to recharge.
In theory.
The problem is this: The Shuffle shuffles whether you like it or not. My husband wanted to sort out the songs on his playlist in a certain order and the Shuffle would randomly mix up the songs playing the playlist backward and forward at a whim. This is when the shuffle option was shut off. It also wiped out his playlist and re-synced every time he plugged it into the computer making it impossible to add a song here and there without redoing the whole list. This made him nuts after 2 weeks and he handed the thing off to me.
I had originally thought I could listen to books on tape, but the first time I used it, I discovered that it was playing my playlist in order, backwards. I tossed that idea out. So I set it on shuffle and didn't look back.
Ok, I looked back once when it played the same song twice in a row. Shuffle? Are you kidding? How hard is it to program the thing to not play the same song twice? I was also not happy when it decided to pick and choose what songs it would allow me to upload. I had put together a playlist that would fit perfectly into the memory and my hand-me-down Shuffle decided it needed to restrict me. This is after choosing the option to have it upload everything. And it changes songs every time I sync. Very annoying.
For what I use it for (2 hours a week when I go to my tutoring session) it works fine. I'm actually not too frustrated when it plays the same song twice in an hour because I can't always hear over the subway. It's also pretty sturdy. I've dropped it on the floor a couple of times and it's none the worse for wear.
I just wish it would do what I tell it to do. If I wanted something that wouldn't listen to me, I'd get married.
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