Rating: 
Summary: 20 gig good, 30 gig excellent
Review: I had to return my 20 gig because it would not always recognize the firewire port, but with my new 30 gig I dont have this problem. I love the iPod, it's packaging, its appearance ( crazy sexy cool) but I sincerely think for basically the same price you would be much better off buying the 30 gig model. Please see my review of the 30 gig for more specifics. I think a lot of the 20 gigs were returned to Apple for problems of one kind or another ( roughly 20% I heard). But the newest model is by far a superior product with improved features and earbuds. The storage and sound in any model is excellent and the ipod certainly beats all other MP 3 players hands down no matter what model you have. The older models like this do have longer battery life if that is important to you, but the newer model has more storage and is smaller and sleeker with better controls. Your option, but I do recommend iPods for everyone. I had no problem returning my 20 gig, and I immediately purchased another without reservation. Like anything there are always a few bad apples in the bunch ( in any product line). A lot of people knock the Musicmatch software but if you go through the tutorial it works fabulous and has a lot of features that come in handy, like supertagging. In the newer ipods there are no separate Mac or Windows models, each iPod has both mac and win software included. heres another great reason to opt for the newer model,it has the ability to cue songs on the go, unlike the 20 gig model here. Ipods rock in any form - get one - a great investment if you want to store and listen to your whole music collection and have room for future tunes, too. Ipods make excellent gifts!!!
Rating: 
Summary: 20MB's is just right for the iPod!
Review: I absolutely love my iPod. I mean LOVE it! I use it everyday approximately 7 - 10 hours a week, and I've had it for months. It sounds great. It's small. It's awsome.
Many other good reviews have already been writtien about the iPod's features and supposed bad points. I'd love to refute some complaints I've read, but I'm going to limit my review to whitch amount of MB's is needed for this unit.I own the 20MB. Let me assure you--it's more than enough memory. I have mp3's on the thing that have been on there since the day I bought it. I have yet to exaust its capacity yet. In my mind, the 10MB is just a tad too little while 30MB is excessive and unnecessary. 20MB is plenty, folks. The only way I could see 30MB being absolutely necessary is if you want to use none of your PC's hard drive for any mp3's whatsoever. But that just isn't practical. Usually the way it works is you have 20-40MB on your hard drive and once you've compiled and organized a full collection of an artist or a playlist you'd like to have on the iPod, you then load it onto it. I admit, if I were buying my iPod again, I would go for 30MB; that's just my nature. But it's completely unnecessary. 20MB is a dream. 10MB leaves you wanting. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: I LOVE MY iPOD
Review: I was wondering why all the less than enthusiastic reviews of this wonderful mp3 player. Then I realized. This is the windows version. O no wonder. I am sorry you should have bought a MAC.
That said Apple just put out a new iPod that should be more bi operating system and it addresses the problem of not being able to make new playlists on the road. And for you windows people it has SOLITAIRE.
You know Linux for productivity. Mac for art. Windows for solitaire.
The iPod is getting better all the time. I LOVE MINE.
Rating: 
Summary: Ipod = Troubles ahead
Review: I bought a Windows 20Go Ipod about a week ago. I almost got another MP3 hardrive player when I saw the price of its opponents and the extra features they proposed. I told myself they could not perform as flawlessly as the Ipod is supposed to be. Well... I finally found out that actually 1 Ipod out of 5 has to be returned to Apple! I tried for 4 days to make my Ipod read my mp3 files (because the Apple product does not read anything windows, do not ever rip your CDs with Windows Media Player). I finally returned the Ipod to find out that that the store was less than surprised... They first did not want to give me another one because Apple changed its policy! I guess it became too costly fot them to handle such a huge amount of bad products. I was lucky to buy my Ipod using a debit and a credit card... The store finally found it easier to deal with Apple than with me. I so went back home with a brand new box... This time I discovered that the Ipod does not want to be add more than approx 20 mp3 at a time... You imagine how long it took me only to put a 1000 files into... And it is supposed to have room for 4000. It now read the songs (the previous one just skipped 20 to 30 songs at a time...). But this is really annoying to have to hard reboot the Ipod every 30 minutes as it freezes due to some unknown internal crisis (it took me up to 4 attempts to put a mp3 directly made out of a CD into the Ipod...). So Be Lucky or Beat It.
Rating:
Summary: Improvements needed
Review: Generally a great available product. Few minor problems: (1) Firewire connecter plug to iPod is very slippery and the connection is very tight. Would need a plier or screw driver to disconnect it. Generic firewires are better. They are inexpensive. (2) Shinny rear and side casing is great. It is easily become dirty with finger and hand prints. A coating on the casing to prevent the miring would be nice. (3) Standby battery life is a serious problem: it is completely discharged after leaving it for 2-3 days. Upgrade v 1.2.6 may have solved the problem. It is a software problem.
Rating:
Summary: sleek, smart, stylish product, stupid, spasmodic software
Review: I recieved this as a gift three days ago. The iPod itself is a well-designed and high quality mp3 player. It comes with a nice pair of headphones, an economical remote with a built-in clip (I liked this especially), a DC power charger, a FireWire cord, a pleather carrying case (which was also a nice plus), instructions, warranty, and then a MusicMatch Jukebox disk. Stay as far as you can from the disk. Keep it in another room, or, preferably, under Yucca Mountain where nobody will come in contact with it. This software is truly poisonous.
The moment I got the iPod out of its stunning packaging, I plugged it in for four hours to charge, then downloaded all of my music to it. I had small problems with this, when the software wouldn't read discs, but otherwise it was fine. Now, when I try to update the music, MusicMatch won't recognize the iPod. I'm going to get EphPod.
Rating:
Summary: Don't buy the hype
Review: Where do all of these effuscent reviews come from? i've never seen such blind adoration of anything; it reminds me of a cult. In any case, i just bought the 20G ipod the other day. For once i didn't shop around and i just trusted my friends' raves concerning the iPod and dove into [money]worth of impulse buying. i'll never make that mistake again. To be fair, the iPod is sleek, sexy, small and lightwight. The packaging rocks, the documentation rocks, the interface (at face value) rocks. The size is the same as any other Jukebox of the same size. So let's not rave about that. Some people have complained about the earphones. If you spend 500 on an mp3 player, buy yourself the earphones you want and stop yer whining. There are no batteries so if you run out of juice, yer done. Having said that, they claim an 8-10 hour battery life, it takes 1 hour to recharge 80%, 4 hours for 100%. i can live with that. The charging adapter is a little square rectangle, not the hideous clunky adapter i'm so used to hating. The silver case smudges. Get over it. People who worry about smudged cases are far less cool than people with smudged cases. i copied hundreds and hundreds of songs in 50 minutes. Wow. Then again, i don't see why i'm so important as to not need to wait overnight. But hey, i'll take it. MusicMatch stinks. Fine. Personally speaking, i manage my mp3's on my own. All i need is a program that facilitates copying the mp3's from a certain directory to the iPod. MusicMatch did that on the first try without any problem. If you don't like MusicMatch, use another program to manage your mp3s and just use it to transfer new songs. (i admit i've only loaded it once and i've read reviews that mention the long amount of time it takes to make incremental updates. Then again, some people make it sound like they plug it in every day. i don't need that much instant gratification.) My BIG gripe is how music is organized. Your options are Artist, Album, Song, Genre and Composers and these are set in the ID tag in each mp3. So you have to have these set correctly. Personally speaking, i arrange most of my mp3s by album, but i have a large folder of "singles." These all fall into their own individual Artist, Album and Song categories. i would far prefer the iPod to replicate my directory structure. Now i need to go through 8 gigs of mp3s and clean up ID tags. Which leads to the biggest failing of the iPod. You cannot queue up songs. You can play all songs from any of the above categories (artist, album, etc) but that's it. People point out that you can create and save playlists from your PC, but when i'm on the subway and i want to play 2 of band X's 6 CDs in a combined setlist that shuffles, i'm SOL. Personally speaking, i AM so important that i should be able to listen to what i want, when i want. Sorry, i didn't buy an mp3 player to make me cool. i did it to listen to the huge amount of music that i own whenever and wherever i want. If i can't mix and match music on the fly, what's the point? i'm especially amazed that Apple just released an update to the firmware and it doesn't address this GLARING issue. It's the most expensive player out there, get with it! If this problem was solved, i'd be far closer to raving about the iPod. Honestly, once you're listening to the music you want to listen to, it's great. The screen is large and easy to read, even if it does cut off long names. (An easy problem to solve with a firmware update, i would think.) Volume, forward/backwards and pause are all easy to use. i have no complaints. i'm not saying that other mp3 jukeboxes are better. But don't fall prey to the overwhelming and, to be frank, unjustifiably manicly adulate reviews of the iPod. Look around and make sure you get what you want. There's a LOT to like about the iPod, but counter culture cred doesn't eliminate it's glaring and legitimate issues.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing comes close
Review: I have had my 20gb IPod for about two months and it becomes more valuable to me each day. It is truly the best audio device I have ever bought and certainly outclasses every other MP3 or CD device on the market. Apple's design is perfect. The MusicMatch software that comes with IPod frustrated me at first, but now that I have experience with it, it is a fantastic complement to IPod. This software is so feature packed, there isn't anything it won't do. I was concerned about the price of IPod at first, but when I looked in my drawer and counted all of the other devices I had bought and had been unsatisfied with, the price made sense. If you want to have your entire music collection, lectures, personal recordings, and whatever with you at all times, this is it. You will never run out of space. I have almost everything audio that I own on IPod and it isn't half full. A must buy product.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest toy a music lover can have!
Review: The iPod presents a whole new way to listen to music. Did you ever have to leave songs off a mix CD because of time restraints? Here you can create yourself a Playlist of any size - or shuffle all of the songs by a particular artist for your own "Best Of" listening experience. Then again, you might want to shuffle songs by genre for a particular mood-setter. Or, if you're anything like myself, shuffle your entire music library for the ultimate radio station. Where else could I hear Julie London, Pearl Jam, Carly Simon, and Lamb in one sitting? Add to these features the Sound Check feature that balances all songs to be (roughly) the same volume (just don't forget to use Volume Leveling in Musicmatch first!) and you have the ultimate music lover's toy. My iPod currently has 2389 songs on it, and I still have over 7GB of free hard drive left. It's pretty cool to know I never leave the house without my favorite 110 Beatles tunes and it's all the size of a deck of cards. I have yet to find a truly great car adaptor (the cassette deck adaptor hisses, and the wireless radio adaptor is touchy) but otherwise I have nothing but praise for the iPod. I had to turn 31 before I got the greatest toy of my life! (Thanks Jim!!!)
Rating:
Summary: Its won my heart
Review: Honestly if you want the best, you want the iPod. Yes there are cheaper PC solutions but I would trade my ipod in for any of them. Ive found that many of the PC versions are larger and have less battery time. And with all the stuff I have in my pockets space is essential. And besides isnt always cool to show your friends you slick and shiney MP3 player rather than a clunky and grey one. I do believe that slick is the word that encompasses everything about the ipod. The menu is very easy to follow. I would recommend, however, along with every other review to ditch Musicmatch. I purchased Xplay, and the new verion 1.1 is better than ever. You can drag and drop or just sync. While it costs more money I can strongly state that it is worth it. I would also recommend a case because you have to keep your ipod shiney. ;) So in short buy an iPod you wont be dissapointed. 20Gig of songs all at my disposal has revitalized my appretiation of music and im sure it will do the same for you.
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