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I’ve had my Apple iPod now for a little over two months.  This is after I swore to myself a few years ago that I would never own an Apple product because I didn’t want to be “that guy” who is as trendy as possible.  To be quite honest, the iPod is pretty darn cool.  Because I’m a University staff member I get a discount through Apple and the price on the 30GB model made it very attactive compared with the other models I was looking at, mostly the Creative Zen Vision:M.

The iPod is very sleek and slick looking with the polished almost chrome-like rear surface and (in my case) the black front surface.  The click-wheel works very well and is very sensitive.  It has taken me a while to get used to its sensitivity.  The simple user interface is also very nice.  Apple has it working extremely well with iTunes for Windows.  It couldn’t be simpler: install the iPod software, hook the iPod up to the computer, and finish the setup then.  Transferring songs, pictures, or videos over goes pretty quickly.

The video aspect is pretty cool.  I can’t watch a video for any extended length of time but for 20-30 minutes while I was on the plane to Florida last March went just fine.  I purchased SNL the Best of Will Farrell through iTunes to put on my iPod for testing.  The picture is very clear and sharp, not something I was expecting.  The same goes for displaying digital photos.  The options you have in terms of setting up a slide show, or viewing the photos in general are very handy.

One aspect of the new iPod I haven’t gotten into yet is syncing it with my Outlook.  I can put my contacts, calendar, and notes from my Microsoft Outlook onto the iPod.  I will most definitely put my contacts on the iPod, but I’m not sure if I’ll use the calendar or the notes feature.

I did already have one near disaster with the iPod.  It stopped functioning.  One of my coworkers thinks it was because I let the battery drain too much.  However, charging it over night did nothing to fix the issue.  The iPod would not respond to the reset procedures outlined on Apple’s support website.  It would respond to nothing, in fact.  I finally called them and they shipped me a box to have it sent in for service.  Just as I was about to put it in the box to send off, I verified one more time that it wasn’t responding to the reset procedure, this time it did.  I didn’t have to send it in at least, but the frustration level was high.

Overall I give the iPod a 7 out of 10.  The points it has deducted stem from the crappy, ear-damaging head phones they ship with it from the factory, the near disaster in the first two months of ownership, and the fact that I can’t play songs from my Napster service on the iPod - or songs purchased from iTunes on any other MP3 player.

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