iPod Or Not iPod? (Apple iPod 5 GB)

Member Name: franl

Product:	Apple iPod 5 GB
Date:	24/11/03 (3402 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Huge Capacity, Easy To Use, Everyone Will Envy You

Disadvantages: Poor Battery Life, Very Expensive, Not Perfect!

I have a genetic predilection for gadgets. Well, that's my excuse anyway - my dad likes gadgets and so do I. So it's come as no surprise to any of my friends when I've casually mentioned the Apple iPod I recently bought. Instead, the reaction is usually eye-rolling, with maybe a sigh or raised eyebrow. Then follows the question: 'What on earth is an iPod?'. The answer I give varies, depending on the technical knowledge/attention span of the enquirer.

The iPod is, by all accounts, the ultimate in portable jukeboxes. The latest models come in three different memory capacities: 10GB, 20GB and 40GB. As all gadget freaks will know, if you're going to have one, you have to have the best one, and since I have a lot of CDs to store, I went for the 40GB. This is the same size as the hard disk in my computer, so as you probably guessed, it's pretty big. Apple say it will hold about 10,000 songs, and in actual fact, even at a high quality, I would say that 10,000 is more like a minimum! The 40GB model is £399 almost everywhere - unfortunately it's a seller's market, and so unless you want to risk auction sites or places like amazon.co.uk's Marketplace, you will pay the r.r.p. Like most Apple products, you're paying for style as well as substance. Or are you?

Because it was such an expensive purchase, I decided to buy mine from johnlewis.com - they have excellent price matching and returns policies! All the iPods available new are for either Mac or Windows - the iPod is formatted to whichever system you use the first time you plug it in - although after being formatted to Windows, the iPod can be changed back to Mac - one time only!

So What's In The Box?
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We live in a cynical world, admittedly, but one that's easily blinded by glamour and good looks. And upon opening the package, you can't fail to be struck by how stylish and high-quali
ty everything seems. Even the box is classy. Every component that you unpack feels solid, well built, and matches the iPod.

The actual iPod is a beautiful looking thing. It's only slightly bigger than a deck of playing cards, and has a pleasing weight which feels sturdy when you're carrying it around. Even the backlight is pretty - it's a nice blue-white colour, which is fairly easy on the eyes, and the controls show up in red. The front is white and very simple, with just five touch-sensitive buttons and a scroll wheel below the relatively large LCD screen. The back is chrome effect, but beware - it scratches easily.

As well as the iPod itself, you get earphones with inline remote control, a carry case, docking station, a firewire connecting cable, mains adaptor, software disk and user guide. The 10GB model, however, is more basic, and the remote control, carry case and docking station are left out, though are available for purchase separately. The extras with the higher end models are all useful, although I felt they could have been designed better. The remote control is good, but very basic, and can only be used within the current playlist/selection - it would be nice to have a small screen and a few more features so that the main operations of the iPod could be carried out. On a similar note, when using the carry case, you have to completely remove the iPod if you wish to do anything - it completely covers the controls. It would be more useful if there were windows for the front buttons and the screen. But at least it stops those annoying scratches.

Most people will not have a firewire - also known as IEEE 1394 or i.LINK - port on their PC, unless they're into digital video cameras, so like me, you'll probably have to install one. They're available from all computer stores, and the cheapest one I found was £22.99 on amazon.co.uk - it just fits into a spare PCI slot. You can use USB2.0 but you'
;ll need an extra adapter, and it's not as fast to synchronise. More importantly, using the firewire port means that your iPod will charge whilst connected to the computer. So once your firewire port is installed, you're ready to go. Just plug one end of the cable into the computer, and the other end either directly into the iPod or into the docking station. Simple.

What About The Software?
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On the enclosed software disk you'll find the iPod manager software, plus software for music management. The correct software is automatically installed when you put the disk in - iTunes if you're using a Mac, or in my case, Musicmatch Jukebox 7.5 [MMJB] for the Windows user.

The software is quick and easy to install, and you will be prompted to plug your iPod in for formatting while it's installing. Here, though, was where I found the instructions sadly lacking - there is no real mention of the first time you plug in, and as a result it can be confusing and frustrating to get started - I watched the 'Do Not Disconnect' message for about three hours before unplugging it all and starting again, with the fear, whilst doing so, that I might be ruining my new toy. All's well that ends well, though, and after a couple of false starts my software was installed and my iPod formatted.

I was disappointed to discover during the process that my more up-to-date version of MMJB had to be replaced by the older version provided, because the iPod plug-in was not available for recent versions. When it turned out that I also had to update the iPod software itself, I was less than impressed - this version of the iPod has not been out for long!

Musicmatch Jukebox is, however, a rather fabulous piece of software. You can download a free version of MMJB 8.1 from the Musicmatch website, but you're saving nearly £40 with the iPod because you get the full version. I had
been using the basic, free version for several months prior to purchasing the iPod, and the added bonus of this was that all the CDs I have with me were already converted to mp3 on my hard drive. All I had to do was click one button, et voila! Synchronisation with the iPod is ridiculously simple, and fast too - I put over 3100 tracks on in less than an hour. It really pays to take the time to get familiar with the software first - although since the iPod comes ready charged, it's difficult to resist the temptation of jumping right in. But if you make the effort, for example, to make sure the ID3 tags are all correct on your music, it makes using the iPod easier.

iTunes is also available for Windows now, from the Apple website - I downloaded this a few days after getting my iPod - but I much prefer MMJB. Some of the iTunes features work better with the iPod, though.

Using both iTunes and MMJB, you can easily create playlists too, which will all be transferred on to the iPod during synchronisation. When you can fit over 10000 songs on a player, the playlist function is extremely important. So for me, the discovery that each playlist is copied in its entirety to the iPod was a huge disappointment! In effect, this means reducing the capacity of your player, because every time you add a song to a playlist, another copy of that song is made, taking up valuable memory space. One way of getting around this is to remove songs from your Music Library and add them only as components of playlists - but this then means the songs are unavailable when browsing. An improvement in this iPod on earlier models, however, is the inclusion of an On-The-Go playlist, which you can make on the player - but this is erased every time you connect to your computer, or if your battery runs out.

Once you've synchronised with your Music Library once, you can add tracks and playlists manually in the future. By electing to transfer music manually, you c
an also use the iPod as a portable hard disk - great for those crisis moments when you think you've killed your computer and need to store all your data! It's very simple to do, using the bundled iPod Manager software. I should point out here that you can't use the iPod to transfer music back to a computer - Apple are very much trying to prevent fraudulent music acquisition. This, however, was another frustration for me, since half of my CDs are in my parents' house and I was hoping to store them digitally on my computer here in my flat.

How About Using The iPod?
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OK, so the actual iPod... You've installed the software, converted your CDs to mp3, transferred them all on to the iPod, and charged it. You're ready to go.

Using the iPod is almost disappointingly simple. You get the hang of the one-handed, touch sensitive controls within minutes, and the menu system is so simple and intuitive that there's almost nothing to learn. You can browse your music collection by various methods, including album, artist and individual tracks - be warned, however, that whatever information you use to display the tracks is all you will see. This can be very irritating if you're trying to queue songs up to play on the go, and you have several songs with the same title, or different versions of the same track - you can't look at the rest of the tag information without playing the track. The touch sensitive controls are a great idea, although they can be a little too sensitive at times! I would personally add another button, and not a touch sensitive one - I would like to see a small switch to activate the backlight. Finding things on the menu in the dark is virtually impossible, and since almost everything (including the backlight) is activated through the menu by using the touch wheel, it makes it difficult to use at night!

The menus are fully customisable, a
nd the sound quality is excellent. Opinion seems to be divided over whether it is improved with use of better quality headphones, but I can honestly say that they sounded great to me. They also fit very well in the ears, and don't fall out as 'earbud' types earphones often do. The only time I noticed a real degradation in sound quality was when I used the equalizer settings. There are about 20 preset equalizer settings, and none of them are much good - if you've converted your music at a high enough quality (I set mine to 192kbps) then it should sound good anyway. The other extras on the iPod include an alarm clock, three games and a contacts section which can be used via Outlook. To be honest, none of these extras held any appeal for me, and things such as the notepad and contacts can only be edited on the PC anyway, and simply viewed on the iPod. One thing to watch out for, should you decide to purchase an iPod, is that mine came with the alarm set. Every morning, I woke up to find the battery flat. The solution to this problem eluded me for some days, until one night when I was awake at midnight, and heard the iPod switch itself on! By the time I woke up every morning, the player had been going all night!

Battery Life?
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Battery life is another one of my grumbles with the iPod. It is advertised as having 8 hours continuous playing time and up to four weeks standby. If this were true, I would still be underwhelmed, although I understand that for so much storage, battery life has to be compromised. However, the iPod is more likely to achieve around 6-7 hours of playback, and loses all the charge in a week. The iPod comes with 32MB of cache memory, and it uses this to play the selected music, so it doesn't have to continually use the 40GB hard disk, thus saving power. This also means it has up to 25 minutes of jog-protection. However, if you like to use the forward and backward keys and gener
ally change your mind whilst listening, the hard disk will be used more, and battery life is further reduced. You'll also find that the iPod freezes for a few seconds occasionally if you chop and change your music selections a lot. The backlight is another sure-fire way of reducing your battery life, but sometimes it's essential!

The battery takes 3-4 hours to fully charge when plugged into a wall socket, and achieves an 80% charge in one hour. It takes a little longer if you charge it solely via firewire.

Accessories
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One of the iPod's strengths is adaptability - it's important to remember that it isn't just an mp3 player - for a start, it plays almost every music file format you can throw at it, including Windows Media files. And along with using it as a hard drive by plugging it into your computer, you can also buy a range of accessories which allow you to do things as diverse as storing digital photos on the go, and making voice memos to yourself! It's also noteworthy that all this can be done at the same time - the iPod keeps all these things separate, so you can still store and listen to your music collection, whilst also transporting important files around!

So, Should I Buy One?
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Well, this might be answered by the fact that I sent mine back last week! The iPod is a great thing, and if you have loads of money then I would definitely say go for it. However, I found that it had a few too many niggling problems for me to justify spending more money than I've ever spent before in my life on it. I certainly don't rule out getting another one in the future, although I would probably buy one with a smaller capacity and just put a selection of music on, rather than my entire CD collection. I think the 20GB is probably the best value - for £50 more than the 10GB you get double the capacity, plus the carry case, docking statio
n and remote control.

Ultimately, I'd put it in the category of 'What to get for the person who has everything (except an iPod)...'. And maybe when I reach that position, I'll buy myself another one!


www.apple.com/ipod
www.musicmatch.com
www.johnlewis.com
www.amazon.co.uk

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