Apple iPod 20 GB > Reviews > GREAT LITTLE JEWEL

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality	Excellent
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Look & Design	Good
Range of Features	Diverse
Value for Money	Satisfactory

Advantages:	.  .  .
Disadvantages:	.  .  .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

"GREAT LITTLE JEWEL": that's how I would define my i-pod…just a present to myself.

Well, it is easy to understand the reason why I chose to buy it: smart, 20 Gb memory (so that I can listen up to 5.000 songs, 3 days long non-stop music, without ever listening to the same song twice), no need of any other support, such as cassettes or cds. That simply means more space in your handbag! Just me, my i-pod and I…well, a battery charger, too! ;P That's all you need!

The question is: why an i-pod instead of a MP3 player?

Well, apart from the more virtual space available, it could be considered as a kind of little external hard disk. In fact, you can even record vocal memos, organize your music folders exactly as you would do with your PC or laptop, play some games, listen to audio books, downloadable on the web.

While a song is playing, you have the opportunity to read its infos, such as the song title, the album it belongs to, the time elapsed and the remaining one. Besides, if you like to have a more complete set, you have the chance of buying all of the i.pod's accessories, such as microphone (in order to have your vocal memos recorded), on www.apple. com/store.

With your i-pod you will find a firewire dock connector cable, a usb dock connector cable, an adapter, earphones and a cd-rom with i-tunes software and all of the information you need in order to learn how to use it at the best of its potential.

The i-pod here described can be used on a Mac or on a PC. You just need a usb 2.0 connection if it is Windows running on your PC but, in this case, you need at least Windows 2000 service pack or latter version.

Since the clickable pad on the i-pod is very sensitive to our touch, we just need our finger to lean on it and let it slide delicately on the pad to scroll the menus and we have to click just the "forward", "back", "menu" and "play/pause" buttons..and the select button in the middle of the pad. Anyway, to avoid any accidental click, there is the hold button at the top of our "little HD".

As it's quite impossible to read what's on the screen when it's dark, we can light it up by choosing the appropriate function on the main menu. We can regulate the illumination power as well.
In order to have a random listening function working, we have got a further option among the others, always in the main menu.

As far as the battery is concerned, it's a long lasting type (like L'OREAL Mascaras :) ), but you need two hours time to recharge it at the 80% and 4 hours time to have it completely recharged.
You can also recharge the battery by connecting the i-pod to the PC but, in this case, you'll need more time for getting the same results. Bear in mind!

When you are listening to a song and you want to pause it, after 2 minutes of stand-by, the i-pod turns itself automatically off, so that you can cleverly save the energy power.
Then, if you want to go back to the very last song you were listening to before it turned off, just click the play/pause button once, and this song will reappear on the screen. Click the same button a second time to have this song played, starting, of course, from the point you had left it.

Since the i-pod updates itself automatically when connected to the PC, you have to be careful: i-tunes asks you to replace the tracks on your i-pod with those on the i-tunes library. Now, if you click "YES" and you have 7 Gb music on the i-pod and just 5 songs on the library, you are going to loose all of your music, leaving just 5 songs on your "travelmate".

I am telling you this just because it happened to me 3 days ago! Trust me: it is not a nice sensation, as you can imagine, and I just wanted to cry when I understood what I had done.
Luckily, I have a great friend who lent me his own cds, so that I could have all of the music lost once again!

Apart from my "not-very-nice" experience, I can say I am really satisfied about my i-pod purchase: it is user friendly and the audio is excellent. I would recommend it to everyone, if only it didn't cost so much (I paid for it 280 € here in Italy) but it is likely that, in a next imminent future, the price will be definitely lower.