For several weeks, it's been making a clicky sound when accessing it's 20gb hard drive and would skip over some songs while playing. On Tuesday, it stopped recognizing the entire list of songs.
I brought it home, hooked it up to resync it to no avail. I reset it to the factory settings, which was also fruitless. The error message I get says that it can't find the hard drive.
I have had this 4th generation iPod since Fall 2003. I had been looking for an mp3 player for awhile and finally decided that I didn't want one of the small capacity alternatives, I wanted something to hold our entire music library. So I splurged and bought the $300 iPod. That first unit actually broke within the first month; the clickwheel stopped working. I sent it in, Apple sent me back a new one, and I've used it ever since. I can't say I'm disappointed with an almost 8 year lifespan.
Now I have a choice.
First up, since I happen to need a new cell phone as well, I considered the iPhone. Verizon requires a $30 monthly data plan, so the iPhone would cost me $360 a year plus the initial cost of the phone. No way. Sheesh.
The obvious choice is an iPod Touch. The 32MB unit is $300. It would hold our entire library, plus a ton of apps and some video. It would be a lot of fun to have. To the down side, it's expensive and bulky (relative to the alternative). Since the vast majority of use for my iPod is listening to music at work and in the car, the iPod Touch is overqualified.
The alternative is the iPod Nano. The 16MB unit is $180. It would hold most, but not all, of our library and would be pretty much limited to being a music player. But it's tiny and light and a more direct substitute for my old iPod. I really like the idea of being able to clip it onto my bag on the way to and from work, something I certainly couldn't do with my classic iPod. I could easily use it while jogging. And it's a LOT cheaper.So, any suggestions? Right now I'm leaning towards the Nano, but am open to other arguments.
4 comments:
Once again Blogger dropped my comment. I'm beginning to think it has a vendetta against me.
I noted with some amusement that the choices you are looking at are all Apple products. Apple makes fine mp3 players (evidenced by their popularity), but if you're serious about researching the right mp3 player for you, you shouldn't limit yourself to just one brand. There are great mp3 players from other brands that might fit your needs better. I've had some luck with Cowon mp3 players (http://www.cowonglobal.com/). What I like about them is that they aren't tied to iTunes, but instead work like an external hard drive (so you can easily transfer mp3s to and even from them), have expandable memory slots for an sd card (where with Apple you need to spend hundreds to get a bigger hard-drive device), and have other neat features like a built in mic for recordings (which I have used fairly often to record convention speakers, for instance), and they support more audio formats than Apple (which probably isn't a need of yours). Anyway, I just recommend checking out reviews from all brands on Amazon.
The other thing is you could look at an Android phone instead. Again, you wouldn't be tied to iTunes, which I loathe, and you need a phone anyway. I was going to look at the Thunderbolt, but needed to replace my Crapberry a month too early, so I went with the Incredible. I've been pretty happy with that, and it, too, has an SD slot.
I just got a Sansa Clip that has a slot for mini SD cards. It was $40 and does not need iTunes. Easier to use than our iPod Touch.
Go with the Touch. Aside from being able to access WiFi and all the awesome apps; it doubles as a book reader. I am using the free Amazon Kindle reader app. I wouldn't want to read on it for hours, but I find that if I'm in line, say at Giant, I pull out the Touch and start reading.
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