APPLE iPod Digital Music MP3 Player M9268LL/A

Rating:
Summary: Hefty price, below average battery life haven't impressed me
Review: ...after paying about $400 for the iPod, I believe that the engineers should have done a better job on the battery design. The unit I purchased runs out of steam every two hours (I have and do take all the precautions/suggestions offered on Apple's Support website), well below what Apple claims in its documentation. Be sure to read at least some of the articles about saving battery power on their support website (I should say that their support website is excellent!!!!!!!!). This site has a plethora of artciles which have been useful to me. One more note about the battery, make sure you use the equalizer settings only when you need them. Using the equalizer for an extended period of time has a profound effect on the life of the battery.

Besides this, one has to spend a good deal of money on accessories if you plan to use this device in your car on long road trips. A couple of accessories are available (e.g. Sony's cassette adapter and Griffin Technology's iTrip). You have to shell out another $20/$35 if you choose to purchase either of these. In my opinion the performance of the iTrip has been well below average. The signal is lost if you are driving in an area where there is no FM reception. All attempts to get the device working without experiencing static were in vain.

I did purchase the carrying case for the iPod offered on Apple's website. For a company as good as they claim to be, I can't believe they don't have enough photographs of the accessory they are selling. I chose the carrying case with the belt clip based on the description and solitary picture available on the website. I was *very* disappointed to find that one has to get the iPod out of its carrying case to even access any of the controls. This is because the case covers both the front and the back of the iPod and I can't fathom why in the world someone would design a carrying case that will not allow the user to even view, let alone control the settings without having to pull the device out of the case...very bad design indeed (in my opinion)...

A note on the iTunes software...I believe Apple has done a good job in this area. For new users who are not accustomed to using a software application to create libraries and organize their music, using iTunes might turn out to be frustrating and intimidating too. However, Apple's support website has a lot of articles that can help you get accustomed to using it. I was very annoyed the first time when I downloaded iTunes, it didn't appear user friendly to me, however with time and practice I learned to use it and I should say it has turned out to be a favorite of mine.

To sum it up, yes this is a slick device, lots of hard-drive space (40GB can turn out to be a good source of back-up for your computer's hard drive!!!!!!!!), has some good features where you can store your contacts (the good thing about storing contacts is you can create a .vcf file using Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express or any other software application that can create .vcf files and download it to the iPod) and also features a calendar which I believe comes in handy for those people who like to use it as a substitute for a digital assistant. It can also double up as an alarm clock :)....*but*, engineers at Apple seriously need to revisit their battery design. For $400 I would have expected to see better battery life on these devices. I have rated this product at 2 stars for the reasons mentioned above, however, if Apple does improve its battery design I would still give it only 4 stars the reason being, lack of an accessory that will allow users to use the iPod in their automobiles and obtain CD quality sound...



Rating:
Summary: I thought I would get a little more for four hundred bucks!!
Review: Apparently four hundred dollars just buys you the bare bones. there is no carrying case included with this ipod. In addition, unlike the ipod mini there is no clip that you can attach to your pants, so you had better have pockets. On the up side they did give small headphones so you can actually listen to it. Furthermore, I found the intunes software annoying. If you just have one ipod and one computer and like to keep all 40 gigabytes of your music on your computer then it works fine. However, otherwise its just plain annoying. the ipod automatically updates and deletes all your songs that are still not on your computer, if you are using two computers make sure you put your ipod on manually. it works well enough after you figure everything out although I find it annoying to use my ipod mini and this ipod and the same computer. More annoying is that the ipod tutorial and manual tells you nothing. You pretty much have to search on google to find anything. also organising you songs is automatic but if you want it organize it your own way it takes some time. Overall this is not a bad product but for 400 bucks i thought i would get a lot more.

Rating:
Summary: looks pretty but...
Review: Bottom line I have had to have my iPod replaced three times, for the same problem, until apple finally refunded my purchase. Maybe the old ones were good- but not the new ones.

Rating:
Summary: Overpriced, overengineered.
Review: Costs way too much, but is essentially the perfect walkman I dreamed of in highschool.

Should come with a case (absolutely needs one). I liked my old mp3 player where I could see song bit rates, drag and drop songs straight from Windows, and set custom equalizers. But this player is so unobtrusive and functional that I can give up those geeky features.

White electronics will also be "so 2005" one day.


Rating:
Summary: Way too expensive for its features- Get Archos Gmini 400
Review: Having owned the ipod for 8 months now, I decided to try another product. Anyone who buys an ipod only want it for the beauty and not its purpose. "dont judge a book by its cover." Sure the ipod looks very beautiful on the outside but look, you're paying premium price for just the looks and not the features. However, the Archos Gmini 400 is more than 50 dollars less than this ipod and look! its the same size and weight as the 20 gig ipod with video playback, photo, voice recording features. People who buy ipods are just trying to "get with the crowd" and do not realize the pettiness of its features. Get the Archos Gmini 400.

Rating:
Summary: What is the hype all about - this thing is OVERRATED
Review: I just bought one and feel ripped off. The user experience is terrible if you want to use the iPod to listen to audiobooks and to store data on the device. It tries to take over your machine with iTunes, and doesn't let you copy any files from the iPod to the computer - in short, you can't really use it as a portable hard drive. I'm giving this thing away and going back to my Creative Jukebox. Don't you people know there are better devices out there? This one seems to be getting by on looks and branding alone - just an awful user experience.

Rating:
Summary: Great Device
Review: I purchased the 40GB Ipod a few months ago and quickly downloaded about 300 cd's into it. I can take my stereo anywhere and just plug it into any car stereo, home stereo, you name it. It did take a little getting used to using the hold button so the battery wouldn't run down. Did find the manual lacking in directions. Have read some reviews about it skipping and I use it every day to go running. It does skip if you jiggle it around too much. If you put in in a hip holder or in a pocket it skips. If you use the armband designed for the ipod, it never skips, less jostling. Also does lock up every now and then, sometimes too cold, sometimes low battery.
Otherwise, love the thing, great investment.

Rating:
Summary: The best MP3 player available
Review: I've had several MP3 players before and recently switched to the iPod. To my suprise, the quality of the music sounded better on the iPod compared to my older players, even though the files were the same. I heard subtle sounds in the music whereas before I hadn't. I'm not an expert with MP3 encoding, but I assume the iPods decoding algorithms are superior to the other players I've owned.

I once dropped my iPod while listening to music (it hit the ground hard) but the music never skipped a beat!

The iPod also act as your PDA. It has native support MS Outlook "vCard" files, so you can have your contact information on your iPod. You can also add notes and calendar items. Third-party software that helps manage this are Pod2Go and iPodSync. Amazingly, you can get RSS newsfeeds on your iPod as well!

The previous generation of iPod players had short battery problems. Thankfully, that problem has been eliminated with the 4th generation. I use the iPod quite a lot each day, and only have to charge ever other day.

There are a lot of gadgets available for the iPod. I think one of the most useful one is the Belkin Digital Camera Link that turns your iPod into storage space for your digital photos. This allows you to move your pictures off camera onto iPod's hard drive via USB cable. Great if you're traveling and taking a lot of photos!

The iPod is a bit pricier than the competition. But then again, there is a lot of third-party support for it compared to the competition. Companies like Bose and JBL have portable speakers specifically built for iPods. The competition can only dream of getting support like that!

I absolutely love my iPod. I think I'm getting "attached" to it. That's how great it is. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: No gapless playback!
Review: That's right. What can a 10$ cd player do that a 400$ iPod can't? Gapless playback.

For anyone who is a huge fan of flowing albums where the tracks go from one to the next without pausing (the Beatles Abbey Road or Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon), or a fan of live albums or continual club remixes, you will have an unpleasant surprise with the iPod. For there wil be a 1-2 second gap inbetween the songs. Apple will tell you this is a flaw with the MP3 and AAC format that can't be fixed. This couldn't be further from the truth. For example, Winamp and the Rio Karma player can do gapless playback just fine.

iTunes itself has crossfading, but it is inferior to gapless playback. To get around this, one must convert albums or live shows that flow together into one giant track. This in itself causes problems. First of all, you lose the ability to have those individual tracks in the shuffle feature. You also wear down the battery by having to manually forward to the songs you want on that one long file. Add to this that the iPod doesn't like huge files.

This is a huge problem for any serious music fan. The iPod is just about a perfect product. But sadly it can't do what a 10$ cd player does. When one pays 400$ for a device specifically meant for music playback, it should perform to the ability of devices that are 2% of it's cost.

Sadly I had to take my iPod back. Since the Rio Karma has hard drive issues it looks like im waiting for the iPod and other devices to create gapless playback. Come on guys.

Rating:
Summary: Love, Love, Love it
Review: The 40 gb iPod is superior to all the rest. It is so easy to use (after the initial setup and some tinkering, have some patience it is not as confusing as I thought). I doesn't skip (I run and never have a problem.) I charges fairly fast and doesn't run down quick. I do wish it came with a clip and better manual but....other than that it's great Itunes is easy and if you get you music from "other" sources it is very easy to import it! Get it it is well worth it!