stuleg's Full Review: Apple iPod classic 4th Generation from HP (40 GB) ...
Now lets be honest, even as little as ten years ago if someone had told you there would soon be a contraption that could store and playback your whole music collection you may well have laughed in their face. Add to that the fact that this wonder machine of the future would be little bigger than a pack of cards and very likely you would have thought that the particular soothsayer had seen one too many episodes of Tomorrows World. Behold though, the future is hear – and it is manufactured by Apple! I talk about a minor miracle of engineering and computing wizardry, the i-pod. The i-pod recently celebrated its third birthday and is currently on its fourth incarnation, it is available in a number of shapes and sizes – from the pastel coloured 4GB mini i-pod to the just released 60GB photo holding version. The idea is that you store your music on the i-pods hard-drive in MP3 format having first purchased your MP3`s online or converted your existing CD`s. I have long wanted an i-pod but was waiting for prices to drop slightly before committing myself, when I noticed a 4th Generation 40GB i-pod at www.eatay.com for £268.49 ($507) I decided the time was right and placed my order, and my shiny new i-pod was duly delivered two days later.
♫ What’s In the Box ♫
Well it is fair to say I felt like a big kid on Christmas day morning when my new toy arrived, I ripped open the parcel to be greeted with a square box adorned with pictures of i-pods and trendy young people listening to music thereon. Inside the box I found the i-pod, an i-pod dock which can be used for transferring music or charging the battery, an i-pod power adapter, Apple earbud earphones, FireWire and USB 2.0 cables and an installation CD containing all of the relevant drivers as well as Apples iTunes software. Also included are a thirty-five page instruction booklet which includes a quick start guide as well as more in depth instructions, a software licence agreement and a warranty leaflet – Everything a gadget freak like me could want!
♫ Getting Started ♫
Unfortunately I couldn’t dive straight in and play with my i-pod as of course it needed charging first. Charging can be done either by attaching the FireWire cable to the power adaptor and dock connector port located at the base of the i-pod or by connecting the i-pod to the computer via a FireWire or USB port. Since I had not yet installed the software I opted for the first option and sat the i-pod in the dock. A charging battery is then displayed on the display as progress is made with the built in battery becoming eighty percent charged in around two hours and fully charged in about four hours. While the i-pod was charging this gave me ample opportunity to install the software needed to make the i-pod and my PC work together in harmony, inserting the CD installs the drivers and synchronising software during which the i-pod needs to be connected to the computer either by FireWire or USB. Once the i-pod and the computer are synchronised iTunes is installed, iTunes enables the user to buy music online or helps turn music CD`s into MP3 files for transfer to the i-pod. The whole installation process takes little more than five minutes and after the obligatory reboot of the computer everything is set up and ready for the transfer of music to the i-pod.
♫ A Closer look at the i-pod ♫
So you have the relevant software installed and the i-pod is fully charged and ready to go – now what happens? Well, firstly you need to get to know which button performs which function; pushing any button will turn the i-pod on where you are greeted with a choice of languages to choose from. Scrolling up and down the list is easy; you simply draw a finger around the click wheel as you would a laptop touch pad. When the language required is highlighted a simple push of the button in the centre of the click wheel is all that is needed to select the particular option required. The language set up only has to be performed once and when the i-pod is turned on in future you are greeted by a five option page offering the choice of Music, Extras, Settings, Shuffle Songs and Backlight:-
Music:- Fairly self explanatory, this is the area where all the i-pods music can be accessed. Clicking on Music delivers another menu which gives the choice of Playlists, Artists, Albums, Songs, Genres, Composers or Audiobooks. Again each of these options is selected by using the scroll wheel to highlight them and the centre button to access them. The good part about these options is that you can listen to a certain artist or album even if you have only uploaded some of their music as part of a compilation album – the i-pod automatically puts the artist in their own folder for easy access.
Extras:- Extras contains all those handy little items that add a little more to the whole i-pod experience. A clock can be displayed in 12 or 24 hour format and an alarm clock ensures you will never over sleep as long as you have your earphones in. Notes can be stored on the i-pod simply by dragging and dropping a .txt file to the notes folder within the i-pod icon in My Computer when it is connected to the PC. Games is again self explanatory with classics such as Brick, Music Quiz, Parachute and Solitaire available for your titillation while listening to some music. Calendar lets the user set up a to do list so that reminders can be delivered on the relative date.
Settings:- This is where the guts of the i-pod sit, various options in this folder determine how the i-pod behaves from setting the backlight timer to whether the scroll wheel clicks when you run your finger over it. Legal information and details about how much space is left on the i-pod is also located here as is the ability to reset the i-pod to its factory default should a problem occur.
Shuffle Songs:- again this option speaks for itself – this gives the listener the opportunity to have any of their songs played in no particular order, nice for a bit of variety I guess especially if your i-pod holds the stated 10,00 songs!
Backlight:- simply switches the backlight on and off independently of any options you have selected using the backlight option in the settings section. The backlight can be turned off completely, kept on for 2, 5, 10 or 20 seconds or be kept on permanently. Obviously depending on what option you go for the battery life will be effected.
♫ Preparing or Buying Music ♫
Music is transferred to the i-pod using the supplied software application – i-tunes. Music is transferred from i-tunes to the i-pod in one of three ways, firstly, i-tunes can search your hard-drive for any MP3`s you may have stored and transfer them automatically. The next option is probably the one in which the majority of i-pod users use and that is to transfer music from a CD. This is done simply by inserting the music CD into a drive; i-tunes will automatically detect the disk and if you are connected to the internet i-tunes will use the Gracenote CDDB (CD Database) to automatically retrieve track and artist details. Then it is a simple matter of clicking the Import icon and waiting for the CD tracks to be ripped to i-tunes in MP3 format. Typically I have found it takes the average CD around three minutes to be converted although computer and drive speed will dictate this somewhat.
The third way of acquiring music for your i-pod is to purchase it at the i-tunes music store. Simply clicking the Music store icon in the right hand pane of i-tunes opens up the store and reveals some 700,000 songs available for purchase and download. Browsing is easy and can be done by genre or alphabetically, when a song is found that you would like you simply add it to a cart as you would in any online shop. Special offers are available for whole albums so that one with twenty tracks will not cost twenty times 76p ($0.99). Once paid for the download process is swift and the tracks are delivered directly into i-tunes for transfer to the i-pod.
♫ Transferring Music from i-tunes to i-pod ♫
The transfer of music from i-tunes to the i-pod is a fast and pain free operation and requires very little effort on the users behalf. Simply plug the i-pod into the chosen cable (FireWire or USB 2) and let i-tunes auto detect it – which usually happens in around ten seconds. If the i-tunes software is set to auto-sync the music is simply transferred to the i-pod at a lightening fast pace (typically about one second per music track in my experience). Once transferred the i-pods display will inform that it is safe to disconnect and you have an i-pod with plenty of music files on it!
♫ What I Like About the i-pod ♫
Well, there is much to like about the i-pod, not least the appearance of the unit. It is compact and deliciously simple in its look and operation. The click-wheel is a great way to scroll up and down on screen menus and pushing it to select one of the options produces a firm feel. The sound quality is very high and accessing any of the 3500 songs I have on it only takes moments. The internal hard-drive is quiet and any static is virtually undetectable. It is also considered very cool at the moment with shortfalls expected come Christmas – It really is the must have accessory for gadget and music freaks everywhere.
♫ What I dislike about the i-pod ♫
For some strange reason Apple decided to make the back of the i-pod highly polished metal and as such you only have to look at it for it to scratch. Battery life is on the low side – Apple state twelve hours but I have only managed around eight. Also, the battery is unchangeable due to the i-pod being a sealed unit plus the battery is only covered by warranty for ninety days! So if your i-pod battery goes wrong after just three months of i-pod ownership you have to kiss goodbye to your £268 and buy another one! You also have to keep the MP3`s you have downloaded/ ripped from a CD on your computers hard-drive otherwise i-tunes will detect they have been removed and kindly wipe them off the i-pod as well (although there is a work around for this). A colour screen would have been nice but I guess that as this is only an MP3 player it is not strictly necessary. Also, it is a brave man or woman indeed who goes out with the highly recognisable i-pod ear phones in position after dark – they are the second most targeted items by muggers after mobile phones.
♫ Final Thoughts ♫
I love it, simple as that. Yes the initial transfer of your music collection from CD to i-pod is time consuming but as i-tunes retrieves track and artist names from online it really is only a matter of changing CD`s. I have now completed this operation and have 3633 songs on my i-pod taking up 12.51 GB – so I still have over 25 GB of empty space to fill, safe to say that will take me several years. Battery life could be better but the eight-ish hours I manage to squeeze from it is a lot of music to listen to in one day. Four stars out of five from me.
www.apple.com
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 507 Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
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