Rating: 
Summary: Was there ever a time before iPods?
Review: It is hard to believe, but the iPod only came out last October. Seems to me that I've been using one for years, but clearly that is not possible. I think it shows how much a part of my listening habits the iPod has become.Prior to owning an iPod, I had a couple of other MP3 players, but always found them clumsy and unsatisfying. Apple's iPod was very easy to learn, very intuitive. I have handed it to a couple of people and they have likewise had little trouble getting it to play music. The downloading of music via the firewire connection is just one of the highlights. I plugged the iPod in, and after a couple of initial set up questions, it was ready to go. Integration with Apple's iTunes is tight, and the uploading to the iPod was soon under way. I filled the 10 gig hard drive in around 15 minutes, if I remember right. I take the iPod almost every where. In my car, I connect it to my car stereo via a cassette adapter, and think it makes for safer driving than fumbling around for CDs or tapes. The iPod contains dozens of albums, and with its one-handed operation and large type read out, a new selection can be chosen with minimal driving distraction. I recommend the iPod without reservation.
Rating:
Summary: IPOD-The Best
Review: Just the best MP-3 player out there..Fast to load, great sound, portable....do yourself a favor ..get it!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous mp3 player
Review: Ok, so it's a bit steep in price. But this thing is worth it. First off, it's got Firewire to load your songs on with. Faaaast. Then, it has great sound! I just couldn't stop listening to it. It's really, really easy to use. I mean, really, really easy. Incredibly intuitive. I even used it hooked up to my car deck. It worked well. And it has a *10 hour* battery life. Plus with the new 10 gig model, you get a remote and a nice belt holster. I had the original 5 gig as a test model for 3 weeks. Had to send it back, and I have missed it so much since. Now, I'm just gonna have to buy a 10 gig.
Rating:
Summary: Apple does it again!
Review: Over the last 20 years I have used every type of portable music player ever made, Walkmans, Discmans, MD and MP3/CD and the Apple iPod is the best one yet. Let's start off with the storage capacity of the iPod, they come in 5, 10 and 20Gb models. On my 10Gb model I currently have 155 songs ripped at 256k VBR, which is indistinguishable from CD quality and which takes up about 1.5Gb of space. So, assuming that all other things are created equal I can put 900 songs on this at excellent quality. Assuming 3 minutes per song thats around 45 hours of excellent quality audio. Not too bad for something the size of a deck of cards. The user interface is almost intuitively obvious, scroll through menu selections and playlists with the scroll wheel, select menus with the "menu" button, skip forward and back and select tracks with the other buttons.
Synching up with your Macintosh is trivial, connect the firewire cable to your Mac and plug it into the firewire port on the iPod. iTunes launches automatically and you can sync playlists and download music to the player. Download speeds are incredibly quick, it took about 5 minutes to put 1.5Gb of music on the player.
The size of the player is perfect, it fits into a shirt or pants pocket or you can purchase an optional belt case.
The downsides of the iPod are the stainless steel back, which is really cool but quickly picks up fingerprints and the fact that there is no way to replace the battery. Once your iPod battery has gone dead you are apparently supposed to throw the unit away. I would think that for a company such as Apple, which prides itself on thinking differently, that they might try to come up with with something that isn't going to end up in a landfill in a few years.
The iPod is pricy, but the prices are dropping and for the money you get the best MP3 player in the business.
Rating: 
Summary: Solid, portable player
Review: Pros * Very small and portable compared to other players of the same size
* Clear and easy-to-use buttons and menus
* Firewire is nice and fast for large transfers
* Charger is integrated into firewire; there is also an AC adapter
* Bought this to work with my PC; works great with Adaptec's firewire... Con'sObviously cost
* Earbuds are a bit large for me
* Not impressed with quality of earphones
* No radio tuner; such a simple function would have made the player just that much better
* Doesn't support M3U playlists
* Might be difficult to implement, but if it could support foreign languages
* Wish it had USB2.0 for inter-compatibility with PCs
Rating:
Summary: Crank It Up!
Review: Super fast - elegant - simple interface - clean case, geat sound - loads of features! and so easy to use!
Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: Technology at its finest. Beautifully designed, lightweight, built to last and does what it's supposed to do and then some. I synched up 8 gigs of music in about 15 minutes. Perfect integration with iTunes means you can carry your entire music collection with you wherever you go. Yet another example of Apple's user-friendly, style-conscious design sensibility conquering the junky, beige plastic, pull-your-hair-out world of that giant, monolithic dinosaur in Redmond. This is what all other MP3 players hope to be when they grow up.
Rating:
Summary: A Gem of a Product
Review: The iPod is a fantastic MP3 player. From a design standpoint, there is no competition - nowhere an MP3 player as cool. I swear, if there is one piece of electronics that will get you girls this is it (seriously). You can transfer 10 gigs in under 15 minutes (note that 10 gigs with a USB connection will take hours upon hours). I often visit friends and download their entire iTunes music library onto the iPod in minutes. You can't, by the way, copy iPod music to a computer - only computer to an iPod, for copyright reasons of course. The iPod has a very intuitive and easy-to-use interface - just 5 buttons and a scroll wheel control the whole thing. I happen to really like the new touch-sensitive scroll wheel. The quickest way to get a feel for the interface is to actually go to the Apple site, where they demo the interface very nicely: ...< My only complaints with the interface is that long song names will be cutoff (except in play mode, where the song title scrolls across the screen) - this makes it sometimes tricky to view items in the iPod by song title. In terms of sound-quality, I now import my CDs at 128kbs (to maximize space)... and on the iPod it sounds fine (no hissing, or problems of any kind that I can notice). The iPod will play very loud, which is an improvement over the old model, I have heard. I listen to my iPod with headphones, in the car (with a audio tape adaptor), and at home connected to our receiver. Again, no complains with volume and sound quality. You might, however, have a number of MP3s that play at different volumes - and this can either startle you or make you think nothing is playing. The "Sound Check" feature of the iPod supposedly addresses this issue - however, it doesn't seem to make to much of a difference in my opinion. Battery life for me has been at about 5 hours (I think)... but I keep the iPod volume very high on the unit when in the car. My only real complaint is with how easily the unit scratches, but really, if you take good care of it, scratches will be minimal.
Rating:
Summary: A breakthrough product, but we want more!
Review: The iPod is hands-down the best portable music player ever made. With a few tweaks by Apple, however, it could be the best gadget ever made (Read on). First, the original iPod is a breakthrough, not because it plays MP3s, not because of its long-lasting rechargeable battery, not because it holds 1,000 songs or 5 MBs of data. It's because it's all of these things in a 6.5-ounce package (lighter than my cell phone) with ULTRA-fast FIREWIRE. Try loading 1,000 songs onto a USB device and your computer will be whirring away all night. The iPod does it in 10 minutes. That's 100 CDs, man. (Or, with the new 10MB iPod, 2,000 songs or 200 CDs). The iPod also has a brilliantly simple and elegant scrolling wheel that is as intuitive as a squirt gun. Pull the trigger, press a button, you're listening to Pearl Jam. Now, despite the fact that this is undeniably the biggest breakthrough in portable music since the original Walkman, the iPod misses a couple of opportunities to MULTIPLY its value with a few small tweaks. For starters, the iPod's value would increase dramatically if it could RECORD. I would ditch my Minidisc recorder that I use for my dayjob as a reporter in an instant if I could record to the iPod instead (MP3 encoding would be sweet, too..can you imagine what folks would pay for a 6.5 ounce gadget that could record 100 hours of digital audio?). I sincerely hope Apple is already working on the recording feature. Next, and perhaps even more important, would be a camera-docking feature. How many times have you been on a vacation to Europe or somesuch with your digital camera, and shelled out a small fortune for measly 64 MB or 128 MB flash cards? How much do you think professional digital photographers would pay for a 5GB or 10GB flash card?... You don't think they'd snatch up a fleet of iPods for docking their cameras if they could? You're darn right they would. (And professional digital photography, especially at newspapers, is one area where Apple is a clear leader). Hopefully Apple is talking to the Canon folks who make the superior digital ELPH as we speak. This feature would be a perfect fit with iPhoto, just as the iPod is a perfect fit now with iTunes. Can you just imagine, instant Firewire syncing of all your images? It would be nice also if they added a color TFT screen option to view the photos, but perhaps that's just wishful thinking. And, speaking of wishful thinking, how about a video-docking feature? 5GB is about the same as one DVD (4.7GB), so why not have an iPod docking feature for digital video cameras? Get easy syncing with iMovie and burn it with iDVD. Lots of folks also see potential for the iPod to morph into a PDA. Already, Apple has added a software patch that allows you to download Palm or Outlook contacts. I personally don't see a need for taking that too far. The iPod is the best music player ever. With a few tweaks, it has the potential to be the best audio recorder ever and the best camera docking solution ever. It will never be the best PDA ever, so why try? Once again, kudos to Apple, but I only give this four stars because the iPod can be so much more, if only the folks at Cupertino don't blow it. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: The best there is!
Review: This is the best! Superior audio quality. Excellent battery life (8-10 hours). Super fast transfer using Firewire. Very intuitive and easy to use menus. Great feature set including contact lists, calendar, games and more. If you know a music lover, this would make a great gift! I take this thing everywhere. I would recommend the Sennheiser PX 100 headphones (available on Amazon for under 40 dollars) as a must have accessory for this. I also like the ability to use this as a firewire hard drive which allows backup of important files from my hard drive. It costs more than the competition but is worth EVERY bit of it.
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