iPod Start To The New Year

Aargh! What a start to 2011 - it looks like Apple has finally got me. After many years of studiously avoiding iTunes like the plague by use of my trusty Creative Zen, I have now relented and replaced it with the unfeasibly tiny iPod Nano. I’d like to think that there are several compelling reasons for this so I’m going to state them here just to reassure myself that I’ve done the right thing:


1. My 20Gb Zen was feeling its age and was beginning to have all sorts of disc start-up and shut-down problems making me spend hours rebuilding libraries and trying to hard reset the thing in an effort to make it work at all.

2. Having changed my computer, I have found that Windows 7 does not support the software associated with my old Zen, so I cannot add or manage the music files any longer. Well, there’s a surprise. And the Creative website offers no upgrade either so I’ve been made obsolete. There’s an even bigger surprise.

3. My daughter already has an iPod so iTunes has become a way of life for her and vicariously for me. I’ve learned that it is possible to keep multiple music libraries in a single install of iTunes. By holding down ‘Shift’ when you fire it up, it allows you to choose which library you wish to see and thus sync to. This is not generally advertised on the iTunes website – I discovered it on a user’s forum. That probably means it will be withdrawn when the software next updates, leaving me high and dry.

4. I don’t actually like the new generation of Creative products – hence I have been enticed by the undoubted style (over content?) of the iPod.

My only other consideration was which iPod. Up until now, my Zen has housed a large proportion of my music collection but I’ve come to realise that now the novelty of having access to most of my LPs and CDs on tap has worn off, I don’t really need them all. So instead of a bulky, disc driven device that makes holes in my pockets, I’ve gone for a lighter, solid state 16Gb model with the intention of only carrying around stuff I am currently listening to and changing the playlist every so often. It means that I pay less and can therefore afford to replace it when it, again, becomes obsolete - as it will. It has no camera or other useless gimmicks and just plays music - perfect. Whether all this works in the long term or has me hankering for a larger capacity model remains to be seen but for the moment the experiment continues.

Watch this space!

PS - I've just discovered that the damn thing has no on/off switch.  You can only put it into standby which eats the battery - great!