"Thinking of buying an Ipod, what do I need 2 know" Topic

My, CD player in my studio and walkman are both dying. I want to pick up an Ipod, what do I need to know?

How do I down load the songs on to it?

What cost am I looking at? Best place to buy (in the USA)?

Do I have to use those gd aweful earbuds?

How can I get Speakers for it, what ones are the best?

1) You can use iTunes to synch up video and audio to the ipod.

2) You can get sales at big box store – and there are educational discounts at the apple stores. Also – the folk at the apple store will be very helpful in picking one out to suit your needs

3) Oh goodness no! First thing I did was swap mine out for 2 reasons. First they are uncomfortable and second I don't like to advertise the gear I'm carrying with me.

Speakers vary, you'll want to figure out what your needs are first and then go with that. I can plug my computer speakers right into my ipod – so anything should work, but there are also specialized docks for ipods as well.

1. You will have to use iTunes to get the music in, you can rip CD's from your own collection and import, if you don't want to purchase from their store.

2. Check the Apple Store, they usually have deals on refurbished units. Also check Buy.com

3. A 1gb Nano will give you 6+ hours of music before it starts to repeat, if you don't put any other types of files on it.

You any speaker that have an 1/8" phono plug, and there is a cable that allows you to imput in to any standard RCA L/R jack.

Use any head phones you like.

Wait for the iPhone

Or better yet, wait for the I-rack.

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I'm told that the Nano and the next model up are the ones to buy, since neither one has many moving parts inside and they won't wear out too fast. Virtually everybody I know that has bought one of the ones with bigger capacity has had bunches of problems. I still want an 80 Gig one, though-- I have a LOT of music. I'll just hope I don't have too many problems with it…

I've got one of the early ones. I'm using it as my stereo replacement -- so I'm using speakers instead of headphones.

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We have an original iPod Shuffle and a Nano.

The Shuffle plays either in order by artist and title (alphabetical) or by a random order determined when it's loaded. The "random" order is set until you reset the shuffle. This means if you skip back or forward during "shuffle" play, you'll always hit the same sequence of songs, although how the songs are sequenced is random. The shuffle has no screen, so you can't pick out a specific song (unless you know its numerical location and count "skips" to find it), or play games, load pictures, etc. It's music or audio pod-cast only. Maximum storage on these is 512 Mb (I think… it might be 1Gb— there are two versions, and I get muddled as to what the storage is). The current Shuffles are about an inch and a half square (I'm guessing) and have a built in spring-loaded clip so you can attach them to clothing, belts, etc.

The Nano is about the size of a credit card, although narrower and thicker (about as thick as two strips of gum stacked together). It has a screen, so you can select specific songs, view pictures, and play certain limited games (but not the elaborate graphic games— for those, you need an iPod Video). Storage is 2-4Gb. The Nano also features "sound limiting" software if you're concerned about hearing loss, and a password feature so you can prevent kids from changing the maximum volume. The shuffle can't use this feature.

Others are a straight iPod and the iPod Video. The latter can play videos (including downloaded movies) and downloadable video games (though don't expect a PSP or Gameboy). They are both larger, thicker and offer more storage than the Nano.

iPods will work with any PC that has a USB connection, though naturally Mac implementations are the best.

iTunes is the software to load music (and anything else) onto your iPod, and download music from the Apple iTunes Store. It's available for both Macs and PCs for free, and comes with your iPod. iTunes is incredibly simple to use. Put in your CD and tell iTunes to import it. If you're connected to the Internet, iTunes will also look up the CD info— artist, title, song titles, genre— from the Internet and store that with your music files. You can then create playlists selecting songs as you like. You can load different playlists into an iPod, mix 'em up, combine them, whatever. iTunes will also track your listening preferences if you want. Great software.

Do all the IPod variations have a mini hard-drive in them… or are some of them 'solid state'… like a Sans Disk with the ability to add additional memory?

The smaller versions are solid state – the larger version have HDDs in them

I've got an old 40G (I've had it 3 or 4 years now) and she hasn't given me any problems.

I sometimes wish it had a bigger drive, however. :)

I use it to transport big files as well.

You also should know that your life will improve considerably.

There's not just burning music cd's onto it there's also podcasts of all kinds to which you can subscribe and Audible.com which allows you to get books on your IPod for enjoying on the move. Getting in and all of that is extraordinarily simple as well. For podcasts it's 1-click: "subscribe" If you're an info, political or news junkie as I am you will have access to more stuff than you know what to do with.

Get the biggest amount of storage you can:

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much space than to those attending too small a degree of it." ;-)

I've got a 60GB, pre-video model. Very happy with it -- it holds every CD I own (400+) plus many hours of podcasts.

BUY THE iPOD WITH THE BIGGEST HARD DRIVE!!!

Also, you'll want to spend another $80 USD or so for an additional hard drive (e.g. 120GB) to backup (assuming you keep your iTunes data on your computer) or buy two, one for the data and one backup.

I have a 30GB video model and I love it. I've had it for about a year and a half now and have had zero problems. Now, I do know people who say they've had problems with the battery. Touch wood, no problems for me. Personally, I love it. I travel a lot, often to places with no TV or internet access and having 400+ CDs, plus gaming podcasts, plus Heroes, gives me a lot of entertainment in a small package. The one thing I will say is that I got a 30 GB because I thought I would never fill it up. Wrong, I wish I had got the 60 GB. If I were buying one now, I would definately get a 80 GB model. However, I have a lot of CDs, well over 600. If your music collection is smaller and you don't intend to watch TV shows or movies on your Ipod, I'd go with a 40 GB. Personally, I think the nano and shuffle are too small. At the end of the day, it's a personal decision as to what you are trying to get out of the device. I wanted something that could hold all of my music at the same time and allow me to watch video.

Take a look round the web for reviews of alternatives from other manufacturers.

IPods may be fashionable but they're overpriced compared to the competition and not necessarily the best in terms of performance either.

Equivalents from the likes of Creative are all cheaper and come with extras such as FM radios and recording functions. You can also replace the batteries yourself without voiding the warranty.

Quite whay anyone would buy an IPod is completely beyond me.

Can you load your Smart Playlists onto the iPod from iTunes? Or at least use a Smart Playlist to load music onto the iPod? I have a shuffle, and load it like this, I wouldn't want to just dump all my music onto my iPod, it's not categorized.

Can you enter a star ranking (1-5) while listening to a track on the iPod, and have it sync back up in iTunes? I'm rating all my music, but it's a chore, it would be great if I could do it on the road.

My brother ran into a problem when he got an ipod in that his mac was too old to run the version of iTunes required… So be aware of that pitfall. You can have similar problems with some of the competitors that require a certain version of windows media player also.

I have a sony walkman – works ok, my only complaint is that you have to use their proprietary software to load it with music, and the software is slow and buggy.

That seconds after you buy it and open the package Mac will come out with a new model with 10 times the storage, a phone, a camera a port-a-pottie and it's the size of a button. The version after that one will be able to cure cancer. I like the I-pod I just hate trying to keep up with all the versions/models. Some times its worse than trying to keep my computer up to date.