to Pod or not to Pod? (Apple iPod mini 4 GB)

Member Name: FraserP

Product:	Apple iPod mini 4 GB
Date:	25/06/06 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Classic design, massive range of extras, easy to use

Disadvantages: delicate exterior, poor battery life, expensive

We are sold on the convenience of using "ripped" or electronic copies of music tracks, purchased legally, i might add, and the ipod in all its different forms is still one of the best ways to transport and play the tracks, but there is quite a lot to learn if you have not done this before.

I promise i will get to the mini ipod is a moment, but if you are impatient, skip this bit to the heading below! You need to think about what you want to do with your music player before you decide if this is the one for you, or you might simply fall in love with the pink colour and tactile feel, which is enough for many to chose it.

First, it is assumed that you have a computer and easy access to the internet to use this service and therefore the ipods.

If you like to research the subject let me tell you what you need to know. Music on a CD is recorded at about 1,400 bits per second, and when you make a copy or "rip" this onto your computer you have to decide how much smaller you make it; there is a some quality lost as you do this and if you end up with a big library you might be grateful that you thought about this boring bit first. The default size is 128 bits (a little less than 10% of the original track size). To most people this is good quality but if you have high quality head phones or a hi-fi system and want to listen to the music thought that you might want a higher quality to start with. There is a trade-off; you can fit more music in your ipod at a lower bit (quality) rate. If you have a huge library of CDs like my family then this can be a problem as they will not fit on an Ipod mini.

You also have a fundamental choice of "format" for the music. MP3 is safe, nearly universally acceptable but old and inefficient; they are also not copy protected. Apple and Ipod prefer their own version called AAC; a track ripped at 96 bits in AAC is equal quality to 128bits in MP3 (broadly) so you can fit more of the AAC tracks in, quality for quality, than in MP3 format.

Ipods come with "itunes" as the controlling software for your music library. "itunes" will deal with MP3 but prefers AAC tracks. You can convert from one to the other, but each time you will lose more quality on the way, so beware making this change as you can spend hours of time setting up a library in the first place and it is a shame to lose quality you can never replace without starting again with a CD.

If you plan to down load (legally, which is the only way I would suggest, since there is a real threat of legal action for illegal copying) then I am sorry to say there are more things to think about too! Apple is the biggest store of legal music, bar none, and in the USA they charge 0.99 cents and here they charge 0.79 pence, and uplift of about 15% to us. Moreover the track you get is limited to use on a maximum of 5 computers, which have to be "authorised" with a password to play your tracks. If your computer crashes you may lose all your tracks purchased this way, although you might be able to plead with Apple to allow you to down load them again. Also you will get them at a standard rate of 128 bits in AAC format, which I marginally prefer, but anyone wanting to stick with MP3 for its adaptability and lack of the nanny state copy control, you will have to convert and lose quality.

I feel forced to prefer traditional CDs as you have an instant "backup" and a source of the top quality to start with, but I get mine at a cost of about £8 from on line stores like Amazon and CDWOW.

Right, so you have decided one the source of music, quality and format (mp3 or AAC for example) and you can now get an Ipod or other "mp3" player to use it on.

Do you only want to use the player as a mini library that you top up with your favourite tracks from time to time or do you want to be lazy/ greedy and have the whole lot with you all of the time? If you have a smaller library of music or are happy to swap the tracks off your computer then something with 4 / 6 gigabit capacity, like the ipod mini is fine. If you want to know how many complete cds or tracks a player will take you have to do some calculations- if you go with the default quality the site will tell you that you can get 1,000 tracks on the smaller size, which is enough for most people if they don’t have a huge shared library with a family with wide tastes in music like mine. You can also make it go further by being selective, not keeping copies of tracks you don’t like much- there must be a few on most cds that we can live without. However the newer ipods offer to store more than music, such as photos and these also compete for the space on your player; in my view you can never have too much space.

I think 4 gigabytes will be fine for most users.

------Skip to here if you want comments only on the ipod----------

Ok you say, what about the ipod mini itself? Well you need to know that the only way to hear the music is to listen on the “ear buds” they supply, which can be fragile as the wires are easily pulled out of the ear pieces if you are not careful, especially for ladies who keep them in cluttered handbags. You can also buy various mini speakers to plug them into so that you can hear them in your room, but these are extras- a good choice is one of the “Creative” docking stations for about £40.

The battery life is fair, but there is an issue you need to know. First the battery is built into the unit and is not designed to be easily changed by you. Most people, I suspect, will need to get someone to do it for them, and it is expensive. The battery has a life of about 400 charge cycles which is best described like this; if you use half of the charge (about 4 hours continuous play) each time you take it out, then recharge it, that will be ½ a charge cycle so you can do that about 800 times or say if you used it every day for 4 hours, about 2 years 3 months. You will probably use it less and you might be lucky that yours will last longer, but sooner or later they battery will start to get weaker, running out sooner. You must take care not to leave it in a hot place like car glove box on a hot day as high temperatures speed up the death of the battery. Also when you charge it, it gets hotter, so you should not charge it in one of the charming socks they sell to keep it scratch free as these keep the heat in.

The case and screen are delicate- they are very pretty, but will scratch against coins and keys and other objects you keep in pockets and handbags, and it is very upsetting to spoil what is in a way a piece of jewellery. If you want to keep it looking its best, protect it from the start- you can get plastic “skins” and all kinds of cases and socks etc to do this with. Use some kind of case or risk spoiling it.

In practice , if you “rip” from a cd, the itunes software will very cleverly look up the tracks on the internet for you and name them in your library- most of the time this is accurate and saves hours of work for you typing in the track names, artist etc. However there is a trend to add “featuring” to the main artist, so you get a huge long list of names cluttering up your library, which I personally hate as it make the lists long and hard to “scroll” through when you are looking for something quickly. I tend to “prune” the names so that only the main artist is listed. This can take time to do but pays for itself in making it easier to find tracks later.


Don’t forget that you can keep more than music on them too- there is a trend for “podcasts” which is really just books or radio shows and such like recorded and ripped into a format that you can listen to from the ipod. You can however so cleaver things like set it up to download the latest edition of a broadcast that you like to follow.


I have not tried to comment on the basics of the ipod (the menus and controls) as many others have done this very well; this is to tell you a few things others may not have mentioned. For example some of the competitors have built in radios, which is a big plus if you get bored of your own selections or want to keep up with the news or weather. Future ipods will no doubt do this, but technically they are slightly behind the others in this respect.

Ipods can and do "freeze" so that you have restart them or even, horror of horrors, reset the software so that you delete the whole library on the ipod and put a new software base in to the player- if your libary is safely on a computer this is no big deal, but if you do not look after the basic library it is very upsetting.

If you send it to be repaired by Apple you will in all likelihood have to lose all the songs and contacts and so on stored on the ipod, so be very careful that you have a backup on the computer, and back that up too if you can.

On the plus side, ipods have such huge user following there are dedicated websites like ipodlounge where you can discuss and share all about these little beauties.

I think they are a design classic- simple, pretty and functional, but not perfect. We have had to send one back for repairs twice and replace a battery on an Mini at a cost of £70 which is painful, but so long as you appreciate that you are paying slightly over the cost of the competitors for a slightly less fully featured but slight more pretty model with a very big fan base, then you will be happy.

Summary: Classic design but with flaws; love it for what is it

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