New iPod Mini!!!

[Yan Wang]

The mini ipod is small and graceful... but for $250, it's a waste.

If considering getting a "low-end" iPod, just pay $50 more for +11gb space, and 2 more ounces in weight (wow, 5oz. so heavy! )... Plus there are cooler touchbuttons.

[Greg McCoy]

I would buy an iPod if I didn't have so many WMAs that I don't want to convert. If I'm not mistaken the iPod only plays MP3s and AAC or something like that. They probably want to avoid all things Microsoft though. I think it should also have a line-in feature for recording from an analog source realtime.

[Kyle Fenton]

Originally Posted by Greg McCoy

I would buy an iPod if I didn't have so many WMAs that I don't want to convert. If I'm not mistaken the iPod only plays MP3s and AAC or something like that. They probably want to avoid all things Microsoft though. I think it should also have a line-in feature for recording from an analog source real-time.

It does, sort of. There are accessories for microphones and a couple of cables that do plug into regular line ins.

Some open source developers are actually trying to build a WMA to ACC converter. However they were have trouble with it, and I haven't heard anything from it for a while.

Anyways, I believe Apple dropped the bomb on this. I was actually quite disappointed with this year's Macworld Expo. It was just Final Cut Express, new g5 x-servs and RAIDs, iLife, and those mini-ipods. Don't get me wrong, these are good products, but most people expect more from Apple these days with expos. Well maybe it will be better as WWDC.

Anyways I don't know what Apple was thinking about the mini-ipods. Everyone was hoping for a $100 to $150 model, but that didn't appear. The 15gig $300 iPod is a much better value than that mini-ipod

[UlTiMaTeP]

ipod is a waste, if it could be used as a good usb dump station i would love it, but considering the hard drive only writes at 80mbit's thats kinda sad

[FotoPlasma]

Originally Posted by UlTiMaTeP

ipod is a waste, if it could be used as a good usb dump station i would love it, but considering the hard drive only writes at 80mbit's thats kinda sad

I always thought HDD read/write speeds were measured in MB/s (megabytes per second). I also thought that 80 MB/s was a fairly standard speed for HDD access. Maybe I was mistaken.

Anyway, I was considering getting an iPod for a while, but the main problem that I have with it is that it doesn't support Ogg Vorbis. Being as a vast majority of my (quite legal, may I say) music collection has been ripped to Ogg Vorbis, this was a huge concern of mine. However, to my pleasure, Rio recently released the Karma, which supports Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, WAV, and WMA (ick, I feel dirty for even typing that one). It comes in 20GB and 40GB flavors, but 20GB is quite enough for me. I've had it for a few weeks, now, and I must say, I really love it. It's not too big, as some Apple-biased websites might have you think, and the interface is, from my fairly limited experience with a friend's iPod, at least as good as the iPod's, if not better. I can't find any reasons why not to suggest that any real audiophile (read: someone familiar with Ogg Vorbis and FLAC) not buy a Rio Karma, I sure as heck love mine.

Just my two cents.

[UlTiMaTeP]

80 mbit=10 megabytes Tests showed just under 10 (9.7 I believe) I would be using it to dump pictures off my camera, but maximum pc magazine did a review on it and showed that the media adapter is even slower. I will just have to invest in more flash memory. sigh

[Joe Matt]

Originally Posted by UlTiMaTeP

80 mbit=10 megabytes Tests showed just under 10 (9.7 I believe) I would be using it to dump pictures off my camera, but maximum pc magazine did a review on it and showed that the media adapter is even slower. I will just have to invest in more flash memory. sigh

The firewire adaptor is quite fast. I have used it many a time for large file transfers. It's slower than an internal hard drive, but it's quite fast. Also, the media reader is slow, but rumor has it another company is comming out with one that is faster.

Personally, I'm disapointed. The iPod's price is awful, the HD size is minimal, and just the whole thing underwhelms me. If they just put a smaller capacity, bigger dimensional hard drive in the current shel, they could have sold more for cheap. Now they have another 20th Annaversary Mac & Cube on their hands.

[swando]

apple definately didnt cut down the price enough to make it worth having 11 gigs less space. and they lost the scroll wheel? cmon. the trendy colours dont make up for that.

[Kyle Fenton]

FYI

The new iPod has a 1-inch Hitachi Drive. These things retail for $400, so getting it into a $249 iPod isn't bad.

I personally think they should have stayed with the cheaper 1.8in drive or even cheaper laptop hard drives to cut the cost down to $100 to $150. The original ipod is small enough, it really doesn't need to be smaller.

[UlTiMaTeP]

Originally Posted by JosephM

The firewire adaptor is quite fast. I have used it many a time for large file transfers. It's slower than an internal hard drive, but it's quite fast. Also, the media reader is slow, but rumor has it another company is comming out with one that is faster.

Personally, I'm disapointed. The iPod's price is awful, the HD size is minimal, and just the whole thing underwhelms me. If they just put a smaller capacity, bigger dimensional hard drive in the current shel, they could have sold more for cheap. Now they have another 20th Annaversary Mac & Cube on their hands.

The drive maxes at 10 mb's a sec period... might be "fast" but we are all human and we want somthing faster and better, the media reader is slow, and writes at something like 2 mb a sec, which is the only reason I would buy it to begin with. Also, firewire is pointless when computers come stock with USB 2.0 now, so its time for the ipod to make the jump also.

[Mark Hamilton]

Originally Posted by UlTiMaTeP

ipod is a waste, if it could be used as a good usb dump station i would love it, but considering the hard drive only writes at 80mbit's thats kinda sad

They may be making USB versions now, but iPod's are normally firewire. Having used one, they make excellent portable hard drives, and you can even boot mac s off them. IF you wanted a portable hard drive that was rugged enough to carry with you everywhere (unlike most external HD"s) the iPod would be perfect and considering the price of normal full size external firewire drives, the price isn't bad.

[Clark Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Mark Hamilton

They may be making USB versions now, but iPod's are normally firewire. Having used one, they make excellent portable hard drives, and you can even boot mac s off them. IF you wanted a portable hard drive that was rugged enough to carry with you everywhere (unlike most external HD"s) the iPod would be perfect and considering the price of normal full size external firewire drives, the price isn't bad.

The new iPods are USB 2.0 also. I believe you have to use the iPod dock to be able to use this feature.

[Yan Wang]

Originally Posted by Greg McCoy

I would buy an iPod if I didn't have so many WMAs that I don't want to convert. If I'm not mistaken the iPod only plays MP3s and AAC or something like that. They probably want to avoid all things Microsoft though. I think it should also have a line-in feature for recording from an analog source realtime.

I spent one afternoon and converted 2gb of WMA files into MP3... tedious but well worth it - I'm able to use iTunes for Windows CDex is a good program and open-source.

Here's a story:

One of my friend's father used part of his grant money for a 40gb iPod, citing it as an "External Hard Drive". Too bootleg to express in words...