Lets see your shuffle then? (Apple iPod shuffle 1 GB)

Member Name: thebluehippo

Product:	Apple iPod shuffle 1 GB
Date:	28/01/07 (265 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice and compact

Disadvantages: Doesn't let you fill the 240 limit, randomness of tracks can sometimes be repetitive

Never to be too blinded by brand names, I’ve never really bought into the I-Pod hype, I much prefer to look at what a product offers me.
It was by sheer luck that I found out about the Shuffle, when I got a chance to have a fiddle with a friends. It seemed so much more appealing than the MPMan that I already owned. So the next day I had ordered one. Costing the price of £55, which didn’t seem to bad to me, as I’d paid £80 for me previous one.

So I purchased the 1 GB version, which will hold up to 240 songs, which in a way I thought was disappointing as I like faster, energetic music I have a lot of songs that are shorter than normal, hence they have smaller file size, so when putting them on the shuffle I got less minutes on and more spare MB space than maybe the average.

One of the things that appeals to me about the shuffle is its size – being 4cm long and 2cm wide (with a width of 1cm (including the clip)).
The disadvantage of this is there is no track selection as the shuffles gimmick is that it chooses any track that you put on the player – the good thing with this is that it does keep your music random, which I find does keep the music interesting and non-repetitive. On that point I do find the way it mixes is not random. Usually mixing a few artists from a few CD’s in random periods. Also sometimes it does not seem to mix well, as quite a few times I hear a track, then another track or two later, the same track plays again.

The overall of durability I have found for the I-Pod is pretty good so far. It has flung from my shorts when I have been running, withstanding the concrete and still sounding finding. I have also jumped on it when it fell off again while I was skipping. I don’t know how much it can resist water, but it has taken a good sweating from a gym workout, though I wouldn’t recommend sticking it in the washing machine to see how much it can take.

As for the special trademark I-Pod headphones, what can I say but crap utter crap, as they stopped working in one ear after two days. Wasn’t going to buy any of there rip-off over priced headphones to replace them either, so I used an old pair instead and they still work fine.

Another one of the features that appealed to me to ditch my old mp3 player – a charger. Before I was constantly changing batteries, which was getting quite expensive for the amount of time I spend listening working out and commuting, so with the Shuffles recharge option I just plug the charger into a USB port in the computer, stick in the I-Pod and it will start charging.
The battery last for about the 12 hours that it promises.

The Shuffle comes in a handy little box, which is quite amusing the size of it compared to the Shuffle, it contains headphones, chargers and the shuffle. There are also some Apple logo stickers to help spread the corporate image about and an instruction booklet, and a little card instruction booklet, which gives you all the basic controls to know how to use it.

Some more Features –
Ability to ‘hold’ the player so that if you catch any buttons it won’t skip tracks etc.
Shuffle or straight – if you prefer to listen to all your tracks in order you can select whether you want it to shuffle the music or just play them out according to the play list in I-Tunes.
The Shuffle has a simple little clip, so you can put it on a belt, trouser, shirt etc quite easily.

I found that the set-up was a little more complex than it should have been. I expected when first connecting to the computer that it would have automatically gone into an I-Tunes set-up (This is what you need to put tracks on your I-Pod) but it didn’t do this so I had to go on the Internet and look for the program myself.
Once set it archives all the music/films on your computer – this can take quite a while depending how much media is on, also a warning for anyone who has a lot of Windows Media files (.wma) I-Pod does not play these files, and so takes ages to convert all the media files. Since I had about 100-200, it took quite a while, so in comparison with my old player which directly let you copy/cut tracks straight on, it’s quite a slow loading time

Another disadvantage of the I-Pod is the fact that the Shuffle sets it’s self up to recognise only one computer, so you can not take it around and charge it somewhere else without getting the annoying message in I-Tunes saying that the Shuffle is not set up with the library and will ask you if you want to delete all the tracks of the I-Pod.
This is quite annoying as I vary charging my I-Pod between a home computer (which it recognises) and a laptop, which will always come up with that message. If there is a way of sorting this I would be interested to hear.

What I also don’t like is the fact you can’t view what’s in the I-Pod on your hard drive without using I-Tunes, as I feel it’s a lot easier than using a program, however I understand that they must do this for copyright reasons, so people don’t take there I-Pod everywhere and copy there files onto someone else’s hard drive.
So despite the I-Pod hype it is not infallible.

The style and design is really slick, its lightweight so won’t bang about. It’s silver on the outside and the controls are white. The charger and headphones are also white.

Summary: Overall I highly recommend this mp3 player.

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