Thursday, October 06, 2005

Nano Nano

(Anybody get the Mork reference?)
In 2001 my wife bought me the first-generation iPod as a Christmas present. At the time we weren’t married, but after getting that kind of present, we tied the knot in 2002. That iPod has seen a lot of use. For years it was my companion on my long commute from the East Bay to Silicon Valley everyday. It was also my companion on numerous personal and business trips across the country. More recently it has been my jogging companion each morning.
Earlier this week, I retired that iPod and finally bought a new one. I bought a 4 GB iPod Nano. As I mentioned, my primary use of the iPod now is for jogging, so the Nano seemed like an even better iPod for that than the iPod Shuffle. For $50 more I could’ve gotten a 20 GB fourth-generation iPod, but the Nano is far better suited for jogging. I rip my songs as high quality VBR MP3s using Lame, so I’ve only got about 500 songs on my Nano. So I sync it with a playlist in iTunes, as my full music collection is over 30 GB in size.
Anyways, I couldn’t be happier with the Nano. It’s really hard to believe how small and light it is. The wheel is very easy to use and the screen is bright and easy to read. It looks like anti-aliased text on the screen actually, a very nice touch. I’m planning on picking up the Nano lanyard to make it even easier to use while jogging.
As for my venerable old iPod, I’m not sure what is to become of it. It still holds a decent charge (~90 minutes, at least while jogging) and is in very good condition. I checked eBay and it looked like I could probably get $50+ for it, but I don’t know if I’d want to sell it. I’m not a very sentimental person, but maybe I’ll just have to keep it around.

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