The Jury is still out for me regarding MP3, for convenience and accessibility MP3 has definitely changed music for the avid listener or appreciator of their favourite genre or artist etc. having said that, it is contributing to the downfall of the classic album that when I was younger was my sole method of listening to music, a whole album could be dissected carefully and you understood much more from the band/artists perspective because that album is a compilation of work rather than a series of singles that individually don’t give the full effect.
Anyway, despite this I bought an ipod several years ago, which I named Ron, but Ron was taken from me on a backpacking trip around Greece last summer, and despite his flaws and saying I wouldn’t buy another once Ron was gone, I missed him so….and once Christmas money came I went and bought a brand spanky new Ipod from the new Chromatic Range, thus Herbert was born.
I decided to opt for the Yellow chromatic because it’s a different look and it looked like a nice ocre colour, disappointingly this is realistically more like a gold, but I had made my choice and I couldn’t very well send Herbert back once id named him. That’s one of the first things about Ipod’s that is quite unique, a completely untechnical unnecessary and impertinent but you can name your ipod whatever you ruddy well want and it will always appear on your screen in itunes as said name “Herbert” in my case.
Anyway, onto some more important details, the
8gb nano can store approximately 2000 songs dependent on how large the file, I would say this is fairly accutate, it will set you back approx £100 and for this you get, well your ipod and a charger. This leads me to one of my criticisms, The charger provided can only be used to charge via your PC/laptop/mac, not such a problem until you want to go on holiday and take little Herbert along but you cant take Mr Laptop as well, highly impractical, it can be charged through any USB outlet on any computer but it would be much more convenient to charge via the mains like other normal contraption. This kind of charger is available from Apple, in fact there is a wide variety of “extra’s” you can purchase from those lovely Apple people, BUT….be prepared to pay way over the odds, a mere cover for Herbert costs up to £25, their accessories are very unreasonably priced and I suspect the reason my be because you wouldn’t be able to but any bog standard MP3 cover on your ipod, they do need to be specifically tailored for the ipod shape we all know and love and ultimately pay for.
Moving on…you may pay a pretty penny for your ipod, you do get very good sound quality, and yes im sure any sound expert would argue there is more to the term “good sound quality” but im no expert, all I can say is its clear, and better than the sound I get on my Sony stereo through the laptop from the original MP3. it all depends very largely on the quality of the original track you upload, so long as it comes directly from a good quality disc it will sound exceptional, the headphones are specially custom made by Apple, the signature white plugs, but you can of course swap these for any other more expensive ones you may prefer, I find the standard ones just fine however.
Uploading your music is simple, you initially download itunes from the web which is free and a great tool for listening and storing music alone, pop all of your cd’s or other transferable media into your PC and they appear in itunes. Next you use the USB cable provided that doubles as a charger to upload the music, you don’t need to be a computer whizz and if you are a little computer illiterate I wouldn’t let this put you off, though I would advise a friend to show you how first of all because as with all instruction manuals it is perfectly useless. When the USB is connected your ipod “Herbert” for example, will appear in the toolbar, if you click on this it gives you your options, you can make a folder of music you want to upload, or just upload your entire library, providing it will fit. Plus every time you add new music to your computer itunes will automatically sync this onto your ipod the next time the USB is inserted, provided this option is selected. Little Herbert is very clever like that, and can also store your photo’s and games…if you so choose.
As for the ergonomics of the ipod, its design is based upon simplicity which makes it very visually appealing, but may seem daunting in terms of its useability. Once you use it a few times though its very easy to navigate, the pad you operate your ipod with is a round white circle with a smaller button in the middle, it works via simply pressing and touching depending on what function you want, turning volume up or down requires you to touch the circle and drag left or right, left is volume down and right is volume up. Picking music requires navigating a series of menu’s which appear on screen and scrolling again up and down, then to select you press the middle button.
The new generation of ipod has a new feature that the iphone also hosts, and its pretty swish, the screen on your ipod is very large and takes up half of the actual size of little Herb, which is great, but if you turn him on his side the screen will flip to always be facing you the correct way round (it doesn’t realise its upside down though, I tried!) The only problem with this is….it affects volume control, when the ipod is on its side it does flip its screen display for you, but if held on its side – say in your pocket for example, it goes to a screen that displays what album the song is from, which makes the scroll button serve a different function, instead of altering the volume it scrolls through albums on your ipod, so in order to get the volume function back you need to turn it upright, let it register this and then you can turn the volume up, this is a huge design flaw in my opinion, and wasn’t a problem on the earlier model…although for me that one kept crashing which killed the battery.
The battery life itself isn’t too bad, though it can be affected by how you use your ipod, if you use the shuffle function which allows you to randomly listen to songs but are in a choosy mood and skip through songs a lot then this drains the battery quite significantly, having said that it will keep going for a few hours, it could be better but when you take into consideration how slimline the ipod is the battery must be teeny, and a compromise is bound to be found,
The design itself has changed once more and not only is it even more super slim it is curved now at the edges, very lightweight and quite slick, you can buy it in 9 colours all of which have a shiny metallic look to them now, also if you fancy something a bit more personal you can order it via the web and have it engraved, which wont cost you anymore you’ll be glad to hear, it also means if anyone does nick off with it then they’ll have to have someone else’s silly name etched onto it forever more.
I think if you are going to buy an ipod you are looking for the crème de la crème of MP3 players, I would recommend it to someone who is really going to get the proper use from it, there are others out there on the market for less and yes they don’t have all the appeal of an ipod but….a lot of the features are a little luxury rather than necessity. All in all I do really like Herbert, and I take him everywhere, so for me I have gotten my money’s worth so far.
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8GB flash drive Holds up to 2,000 songs in 128-Kbps AAC format Holds up to 7,000 ... more
iPod-viewable photos Holds up to 8 hours of video 2-inch (diagonal) liquid crystal display with blue-white LED backlight 320-by-240-pixel resolution at 204 pixels per inch
Postage & Packaging: £4.39 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Advantages: User-friendly; colourful; clear and bright screen; built-in accelerometer; cheaper! Disadvantages: Click-wheel can sometimes be unresponsive for a few seconds.
Advantages: Loogs great, easy to use, good battery life. Disadvantages: Not all of the new functions work and sometimes get in the way of listeing to music.
Mar 18th, 2009
exceptional by (9%):
very helpful by (88%):
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