Rating: 
Summary: First Apple product I bought: 40g iPod
Review: I been using Apple's product, since Apple II and thought they are marketed for the over-spenders. This is a great product but not as revolutionary like some make it sound to be. The hard drive is the biggest out there. I have a 20 gigs Nomad Zen and I will compare it to my new 40gigs IPod. The iPod is a little smaller and better looking. I paid $250 for Zen, about a year ago, and got an iPod for a whooping $500, my bank account is now hurting. The iPod's firewire transfer is a lot better and faster. I put about the same amount of gigs on each and it took half the time with the iPod. iTune for Window XP works great. Both sound qualities are about the same, which is super. Apple menu is easier to navigate. The dock is nice, but unnecessary. Since, it has no added feature then an audio output which is what the iPod line-out is for. I simply like how it feels in my hand better. The touch sensitive buttons is very cool and innovated. Can be use as a external hard drive, but there are limitation on some features.The Cons:
The iPod's slip on case is almost nonfunctional. There is no opening to turn the wheel or see what on display since the remote has no digital screen to see anything. The remote feels awkward like the old Apple's G3 circular mouse. The combination of remote and earphone is way to long. No ON/OFF switch, this can drain the battery if you unexpectedly bump a button. The features of an FM tuner and recorder are expensive separate add-on so it make the iPod larger Some of the other MP3 Hard drive players have these features already included. Battery is not as long as I expect from a 40gigs $500 MP3 player Reason to buy:
Why I bought the iPod is of the simple and best scroll wheel out there. Finding thousands of songs on the scroll wheel is a breeze. The menu is very simple and the integration of the itune is fabulous. I love almost everything about this IPod except for the price and battery life. The design aspect ratio to price favors Apple, not the consumer. If people feel better, because they bought the word Apple and are willing to paid more, that is fine to. I am not yet sold to the Apple's Nation with this product.
Rating: 
Summary: Overpriced Overhyped
Review: itunes and the Ipod are no match for the Napster service and the Samsung Napster player. Napster and its player has more features and more music to chose from. Go to a bestbuy and compare the two products. Ipod is lame compared to the Napster player
Rating: 
Summary: The Best
Review: This is the best digital audio player. It is better than Dell's new player and way better than Napster/Samsung's player. (try them out for yourself and compare them to the iPod - if your going to spend a couple hundred bucks at least know what your getting before you commit a large sum of money)Design, ease of use, software, interface, capacity, sound quality, productivity and even battery life (though somewhat diminished since earlier versions due to efforts to reduce the overall size - a fair trade off in my opinion - after all, how often are you going to be away from an electrical outlet for some time. And there are car chargers and add-on battery packs etc..) are exemplified in the smallest (and coolest) package in this world. Speaking of packaging, the box that this little gem came in should qualify as art. What more can I say. It just works. And it works so flawlessly, so seamlessly that I find it hard to imagine anything that is as close to perfection. The touch buttons and scroll wheel, the backlight, the solid heft of it, the shiny stainless steel and high quality plastic. Every ounce says quality. This thing will last for a lifetime. Even the included accessories are of outstanding quality - the dock with line out mini plug, dock connector to firewire cables, wall charger adapter, the case, the remote and even the earbuds! Those are some great sounding earbuds. (I've bought tape players and cd players before and they've all included really crappy headphones or earbuds) And it is more than just the best audio player. It has the ability to play some pretty cool games - breakout, parachute, solitaire, and amazingly enough a game kind of like Name That Tune - where a clip of a song is played and you have to select the right answer before the time runs out. It has the ability to store contacts and text notes. I've downloaded freeware programs that get the weather (- from weather.com)and the news (-from Google) and insert text files in the notes section - very handy. And if you need to record sounds, Belkin just came out with an add-on microphone for the iPod so you can record voice notes, lectures, whatever you want, straight to disk. With all these features, who needs a pda? And let's not forget the software - iTunes. I bought my 40GB iPod before the Windows version of iTunes came out so I got to experience using the iPod with MusicMatch (which was sufficient). I've used MusicMatch for quite some time so I was already familiar with it, but iTunes has it beat in almost every regard - interface, ease of use, synching, playlists, searching, organizing. It all works better in iTunes. The only area that is better in MusicMatch is in tagging. MusicMatch's SuperTagging features are excellent. Give credit where it is due. However, I have no doubt that future versions of iTunes (which is FREE by the way - MusicMatch, last I checked, was around $30) will improve tagging. After all, this is (correct me if I'm wrong) Apple's first windows software and at version 1.1 it can only get better. Overall, this is an outstanding product. It sets the standard to which all others are trying attain - and the others keep failing miserably. The iPod IS the best.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable Apple Product!
Review: Hey - I have been an Apple and Sony fan for years. I did tech training for Sony when they intro'd CD's in the 80's. So I love innovative technology! And the Ipod is it! Essentially it is a 40gb hard drive in a case that is thinner than a pack of cigarettes. You can use it a few different ways... The easy way is just let itunes put all your music on it and update it automatically. Take it with you and enjoy up to 10,000 tunes at the touch of your fingertips. Make your own playlists, take the ipod in your car and enjoy the drive. The music quality is great - it is easy to use - the documentation is poor as it is with all Apple products but that is the ONLY negative. I purchased a Belkin FM transmitter and even though I am in No California the music is endlessly repeated here. Now I have tunes in my car again. It sounds as good or better than my factory Honda CD player. So now I listen to NPR and have my music also! The other really neat thing is that since it is a 40gb hard drive you can basically set it up as a firewire drive and when you plug it into the dock (supplied) your MAC sees the ipod as another HD and you can use it however you like - even as a startup disk. For me though probably the biggest benefit is that it got me in touch with all my older tunes which I have not listened to in years. Brought back great memories of great music and put me back in touch with my music 21 century style. P.S. Two kewl accessories FM transmiter for your car and new memory card adapter allows you to store pictures on your Ipod on the fly. Ipod, the missing manual book (Pogue press ISBN 0-596-00477-x) tells you most everything that the manual does not.
Rating: 
Summary: Good start, now apple needs to build on it
Review: The iPod is already very nice, though it lacks in some areas. -should allow dragging and dropping of media to drive w/o using special software to transfer songs to the iPod -should connect to digital cameras and other portable devices to allow for storage on the road -should have removable battery (for replacing when it goes bad -is your $400 iPod disposable?) -should have longer battery life -Should have codec support for other audio formats (see below), including MPC, Ogg, and FLAC. This is probably one of the most important Codec (audio format) choice is a very importwhen deciding on a Digital Audio Player ("mp3 player"). I recently began looking for the best audio codec to store my large music collection. Nothing quite fit the bill. The thing that came closest was MPC, its ONLY problem was lack of hardware support. I dont know if you are familiar with this codec but it has many strongpoints that beat MP3, WMA, MP4/AAC. MPC is an audio codec similiar to MP3. The main difference is that MPC is optimized for quality (and is the choice of audiophiles), while the other new codecs are optimized to give acceptable (but not good) performance at low bit rates. For anyone here that cares about the quality of their digital music I would suggest you investigate MPC. It is nearly transparent (indistinquishable from CD) at 140-170. It supports gapless playback and has advanced meta tagging support. It compresses music very efficiently and encodes and decodes amazingly fast. In fact decoding it is so easy on the CPU that if MP3 players offered support for the codec they could greatly extend battery life. You can read more about MPC here:
Rating:
Summary: I love it
Review: I am a windows user and this thing is great. Having it powered and charging through the firewire on my audigy 2 card works flawlessly. I tried others and returned them for this work of art. It is easy to navigate, fun to use, and the sound is outstanding. I now understand why it is the standard for these types of devices.
Rating:
Summary: Personal Juke Box
Review: This is the most useful personal entertainment device I own. My wife and I use it as a juke box to route music through our entire house. We also take it on road trips and to the gym. We love being able to listen to one-hit-wonders with out having to listen to the rest of the album. We have also used it for transporting large files between computers. 40 GB is a ton: I have over 3900 songs on mine and counting. That only takes 15 GB. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing regression from 2nd generation iPod.
Review: I gave it one star in a relative sense. Not that it's a piece of junk, but that it is disappointing. Also it might help to lower the averaged rating. I have a 3rd generation 30 GB iPod. I upgraded from a 2nd generation 10 GB iPod. I post review here so that people buying the largest storage iPod can see it (30 GB and 40 GB are almost the same except for the 10 storage difference). I don't like the new design, although some improvements are good. I think the 2nd generation was better. I list the pros and cons of the 3rd generation iPod below. Cons:
1. Touch sensitive buttons don't work well. They are small and hard to operate. They are less intuitive than the old design with buttons around the wheel. It's hard to find the right key without visual guidance. You cannot operate it in your pocket or in darkness without backlight, which was easy with the old iPod. Sometimes when the air and my fingers are dry, it will not respond to key press, or it responds with a long lag. The worst part is that it will be activated mistakenly all the time: taking it out of pocket, putting it in a case, try to reach for one key but touched the wrong one during the reaching out hand movements. It happens many times a day. Very troublesome and annoying. What do Apple human factor engineers do in testing the hardware interface?
2. Lack of standard firewire port on iPod. With the older iPod, I can charge and connect my iPod everywhere as long as I have a standard firewire cable handy, which is always available. Now I cannot do that without carrying the docking cable around. Portability of the iPod is greatly reduced.
3. When album titles do not fit on one line, they do not scroll when you play them. I have many albums that I have to guess what they are, and have never been able to see them on the iPod. (this problem also existed on 2nd G iPod.)
4. It doesn't have radio or recording function, while many other players have integrated these functions. Radio should be an easy and cheap integration, at least on the corded remote.
5. Very slow mounting in musicmatch. Sometimes it doesn't mount. 2nd G iPod works much smoother. The sync function is very problematic. Sync will not only copy playlist from music match, but also try to copy the song files, even when the files are already present on iPod. Pros:
1. audio out for better quality output to external speakers and amplifiers.
2. play list on the go.
3. slightly smaller dimension than 2nd G iPod.
4. larger capacity. I ran out of storage on the old one. I agreed with another review that it's hard to download gigabytes of files on to iPod from a PC with 4pin firewire port, which does not supply power to iPod. Battery drain in about 1-2 hours. I had to charge the battery many times before I could download all my music. However, I found out a way to work around it: connect the iPod to a powered firewire hub. Also connect the PC to the hub. Now the iPod is connected to the PC and is being charged. It is worth the money because now the hub also works as a second power converter. In summary, iPod is cool, but needs much improvement to win my thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: Very buggy - Hangs up PCs and laptops
Review: This product is extremely buggy. I have to reboot my laptop and the ipod just about every time I sync up. Plus the folks at Apple are NO help. After 90 days they want you to pay them to assist you with this product that comes complete with massive problems if used with Windows (I am running 2000). Additionally, the battery does not last long before it needs recharging. A VERY disappointing performance from (what used to be?) a quality company.
Rating:
Summary: Owners of Windows laptops with USB 1.1 and Firewire BEWARE
Review: First of all, this beautiful machine's compatibility with Windows XP is at best random (if you count random as 1 successful connection over 20 attempts), with frequent disconnections, one crash and countless reinstallations and resets. But let's assume it is compatible and it works. Apple seems to have decided that, for charging / uploading, anybody with a 4-pin firewire connector was a sucker. You see, the iPod's cradle has only one connector. If you have a 6-pin (powered) firewire port on your PC, that's fine as the iPod will recharge and sync or be updated at the same time. But if you have a 4-pin firewire port, you need first to charge the iPod with the provided power supply and then sync on battery. And since battery life is dismal, it is more than likely that the iPod's battery will die before synchronization is finished, especially for a 40 Gig. model. And to top it all, they do not ship a USB cable with their proprietary plug on the other end. So, even if you have USB 2 (USB 1.1 being way too slow), you'll need to purchase an extra cable from them.
| 
