Monthly Archive for September, 2008

Apple iPod 80 GB

I am rewriting my review on apple iPod

I got it in January last year and boy was I happy when I got it. It is a very good looking thing mind you. It is a attention seeker, but has the stamp of apple monopoly all over it

First of all, apple iTunes, it does not let you control you anything, it controls you. it will rearrange you whole music collection to one folder called “my music”, of course there is a option to disable it but, still it is a headache to find all your music collection has moved places

Movies,

You cannot just the popular formats available around, like divx or avi, you can only play mp4 format, where the hell do you get mp4 format movies?

Apples iStore.

For starters, I had never heard of the mp4 format, after googling for a while I found out that the mp4 format was made by apple especially for IPOD with anti piracy features.

Apple monopoly, any one?

So what happens to your DVD/movie collection?

You have to pay the same price again to get the same movie. JUST GREAT isn’t it?

iStore

Music

If you want to buy some music and directly import it to your iPod this is where you go.

Here each song costs around 99C

Movies

There is no other site which sells legal movies in MP$ format. Your collection is limited to the movies iStore puts up, not a big fan of the Hollywood Eeh? You have no other option. At least you could get some bollywood songs from iStore but not bollywood movies. And the price keeps on varying ranging from 5 to 10$ each.

LUCKY YOU.

Having an iPod is like living in CHINA, No freedom, No religion, Mao is your god (Steve jobs in this case).You just do what you are told

I really hate using the iTunes, my slow laptop has a hard time adjusting to it, it is a resource hugging monster, but I have no other option

And My iPod does not copy the data into it, it sync the data, which means it will only play the music which is present in your computer, you cannot delete any song from your pc or else it is erased form your pc as well.

This also means that for a smooth operation you need to have a hard disk bigger than 80 GB, probably 160 GB, you might also want to back up your data so I will go with 200 GB

Ya the iTunes only work on windows and Mac, no Linux support what so ever included.

As far as the iPod is considered there are no issues as the hardware is beautiful. You will hardly have any issues with it, though the headphones tend to go bad after a few months of listening in full volume.

I would suggest you get yourself a pair of Bose head phones ( you spent 20 K buying this clown so better invest another 5 k to make yourself feel better) Bose head phones and a iPod go together like brad pitt and Angelina jolie

Pretty confusing review huh!

I’ll draw the final lines here

Pros

1. 80 GB attention seeker in your pocket

2. Good sturdy model with no moving parts

3. Pretty sharp LCD with impressive picture quality

4. Good sound quality

5. Doubles up as an 80 GB pen drive in you pocket

6. A good click wheel

Cons

1. iTunes, the most successful monopoly product from apple

2. Sync ….the only way in

3. iStore monopoly, no Hindi movies

4.Not for rough use

5.Tends to get scratched easily

Findings and recommendation

After using it for a year or so I have the following recommendation

Get yourself any iPod but not the Video iPod, the video thing really gets redundant until and unless you really watch so many movies and have that music amount of free time. I just use the iPod for listening music

Any iPod…..Huh?

I got me an iPod shuffle, the teeny tiny one which is less prone to be broken by me (I gave the 80GB monster to my sister who has clean fingernails and a soft neck)

An iPod shuffle with a sennizer headphone.

80 GB of music…you will hardly have the patience to listen to all of them

I went for a 1 GB with 400 of my favorite songs, a good set of jogging headphones and I am good to go

The 80 GB monster is not for me…….I can think it is for some rich girl who has nothing better to do than roam here and there.