Happy Birthday To Me (Again)!

Finally picked up my birthday present for myself:



This replaces my trusty silver 6GB iPod mini. I wasn't sure how much I would use it when I got it, but as it turns out I probably use it more than any other piece of technology I own besides the computer I use at the office - I listen to it in my car, at my office, while exercising, and just at home. I've gotten into podcasting, and in fact use it to timeshift TV and radio programs that I may have missed (and usually commercial-free).

I knew I wasn't going to get the new iPod touch, although my first encounter with it an the Apple Store had a very high drool factor. I was most impressed by the web browser aspect of it, but I just couldn't see dropping the extra money for just a small increase in storage and capability, and it didn't seem like the kind of thing I'd want to take jogging for some reason. It's beautiful to be sure, but just not what I'm looking for.

The nano was tempting, but I had decided to start using these things for some video use. I don't know how much will be piped to my TV versus using the built-in screen, but the nano screen was just too small for video use in my opinion. And the small increase in storage (6GB to 8GB) wasn't very tempting either.

So it was the 80GB classic all the way for me. After playing around in the store, I decided to go with the black one over the silver one just because the black border seemed better suited for acting as a boundary around the video screen.

I had decided to wait for the initial shakedown period - which revealed a few glitches in the new iPod:

1. slow menu response
2. slow Cover Flow response
3. incompatible with existing video out solutions
4. incompatible with existing iPod games

However, items 1 and 2 appear to have been solved with a firmware update, and items 3 and 4 don't apply to me since my previous iPod didn't support video or games (outside of the preloaded ones).

My music library is currently about 30GB, and as I mentioned I don't currently have any videos since my old mini didn't support them. But I'll be getting into them now, essentially using the iPod as my AppleTV. I'm not sure why anyone would buy an actual AppleTV given that they can get most of the same behavior with an iPod classic for about the same money.

Now comes time to drop the old mini plus the accessories I have that don't work with the classic off to CraigsList. I'm hoping to get a little over $100 for it, which seems to be the going rate on eBay - so my $249 iPod dropped in value by 60% in just over two years. Given the amount of use I've gotten from it, I'd say that was money well-spent. Hopefully the same will be true for the new one.