Customer Reviews
Bought it with hesitation, but.....
Mostly on a whim, I purchased the 30GB white video ipod. Amen to the tax return. I started looking at the 2GB, but figured for $50 more I could get the 4GB. But then with the 4GB, I saw that for $50 more I could get 7 times the song storage and the ability to do video, so the 30GB won out. Admittedly, I feared the ipod. I thought iTunes would be a nightmare and that the ipod would break after an hour. Fortunately, I was wrong. When I loaded the iTunes CD into my computer, it allowed me to transfer all of my Windows music library into it, only about 100 songs. It took a little fiddling to figure out how to get those songs into the ipod, but when I did they all worked and the ipod didn't reject any of them for format reasons. Whew, I was beginning to think that maybe this ipod would be a good thing. Then I thought, aha, I will try to buy an iTunes song, and something will happen then, something bad. But it didn't. I bought 1 song and it downloaded and it was all good. Then I said, time to try buying a music video. Again, to my amazement, it all worked. The only problem was that I had dialup, and to download a 3+ minute video took almost an hour. I don't see how I can download a LOST episode at that rate.
So, in all, I am happy with this ipod. We bought a case right away and scratching hasn't been an issue. The sound is good with the ear buds, although I use different headphones. I have a Creative Muvo 256mb player also, and others have written that the Creative sounds better, but to me, they are comparable. As for the Creative Muvo, the FM portion of that player died within 3 weeks of having it, as did all my controls except for play/pause/stop and volume. Course it didn't cost $300, so I hope the ipod has a good future here.
ipod video 30g
the video ipod has about 2 hours of batter power not 20
the people who lied about it i will shoot you
Great New Features...but Some "Caveat Emptor", Too
The battery on my 3G finally turned in its notice. So I upgraded tothe 30gb iPod with video.
PROS:
- The video! The screen resolution is amazing. Coldplay's "Speed of Sound" video, with its amazing rainbows of colors, makes your iPod come alive.
- The iTunes Video library! A very worthy selection of videos are available for you to make your own. Christopher Walken dancing in "Weapon of Choice", Stone Temple Pilots' trippy "Days of the Week", Foo Fighter's "Learning to Fly", Alanis' "Everything"--great stuff.
- The memory! 30 gb is twice what I supported before. More than enough room (for now)!
- The podcasts! I've been a huge fan of Jack Horkheimer's "Star Gazer" program on PBS. Now I can watch these episodes as podcasts right from the palm of my hand.
CONS:
- Yes, the biggest is the battery. And not so much because the battery for video will last--yes--an hour or so, but because once again Apple is totally...TOTALLY... misleading prospective buyers. Since when did Apple get so crooked?? The specs state "up to 2 hours". Sure--maybe with the backlight off. But me, personally, I'd like to see what I'm watching. How do they think people can actually watch whole movies on this thing?? Do I smell "class action, part II" here?
- The lack of support for older perihperals. You won't find one of those interface ports on these. So toss away your former accessories.
- No firewire support. It's all now totally usb, baby. And the included white USB cable is about three feet long. You don't get much distance from the pc to the tabletop.
- No dock connector. Although if you have an old iPod dock you can still use it. Just pop out the old cable and plug in the new USB cable.
- No instruction manual. There's a .pdf file on the disk that you can drag and drop to your pc desktop, but no opportunities for bathroom reading here. And am I the only one who finds Adobe Acrobat a bit annoying?
- The screen scratches. I'm so paranoid about this that I've just left the cellophane sheet on (the one that that comes on the iPod when you first get it). I just peel it back and let it flap back down to eliminate bubbles.
There you have it...
