Apple iPod - 30GB - White [video playback] MA002FB/A

I succumed to getting an ipod after taking my Sony A3000 and Philips Hard Disc player back. Thanks god. This is a great music player that is comparible with the phillips in terms of being able to fit around 7,500 songs on it. I used to have a Sony NW-HD5 which was great, and that's why I went for the A3000, however the Sonicstage software is crap.

Using Itunes you can use the machine as a hard discplayer and with a downloadable application called Sharepod, which you store on your Ipod, you can remove songs to your own computer or even someone else's. This is a great asset, becuase I had to reformat my PC yesterday and this enabled me to preserve my entire music collection and transfer it back to my PC when the reformatting process was done.

If I have any advice, I will say be sure of buying the machine you want. I love this one and have had no problems what so ever. Secondly buy a protective screen sheet and a Rubber Case to protect the case, this will ensure that your beautiful machine stays in pristine condition. lastly buy a car charger if you intend to listen to it when driving and also a mains charger, as the only initial way to charge is through the computer link lead, there is no mains charger. a small price for such a versatile piece of kit.

I would also recommend buyers to buy the new Sony in the ear earphones, with the different sized ear fittings. The Ipod ear phones are uncomfortable, but are necessary when posing around town.

In terms of the battery life, I manageed to drive from Peterborough to Edinburgh and back on a single charge. The key to a longer battery life is to cut the backlight down to 2 seconds and to put everything you are going to listen to on a playlist to avoid the hard disc having to spin up too often.

Finally, enjoy it if you get one. I would recommend it and wish that I had read a review like this prior to buying a new Mp3 player.

I received my white Ipod 30gig yesterday, after waiting about a week for it to come from abroad (china according to the TNT paperwork. I didn't get mine off amazon, but from the apple shop instead (same price but with free laser engraving). initial impressions were good. The box it comes in is very small and sleek. the Ipod well protected within a cut out, and with headphones and the usb data/charging cable. I was a little disapointed that for the money apple don't include an independent mains charger. (still I'm sure apple want to keep their accessories market riding high!). The ipod is very sleek indeed, and the front white perspex finish makes it look very high quality.not to mention the shiny metal backing. latest itunes installed no problem and was ripping my CDs in no time. To get the video working you need to be a little more clued up. First I ripped a dvd to my hard drive (use dvdshrink or dvddecrypter - both free). now, apple's website suggests you purchase apple quicktime pro to create videos (either their own .mov or .mp4), but in theory the ipod supports the mpeg-4 h.264 format, with aac audio -- so you should be able to use ANY program to create this 'standard'(.mp4) format. I used NERO RECODE. i initially had problems where itunes would happily play my recodes, but was refusing to upload them to the ipod, as they were an 'incompatible'format , so i recoded my rips in 320x240 resolution and they worked just fine, nice and smooth. have now got all office series 1 and 2 on there, at 93meg per half hour episode.. sweet. onto other things. the sound of MP3 196kbit sounds bright enough through the ipod head phones, the screen is nice and bright, though scratches easily (i have one already!) and i like the games (solitaire very similar to windows version) nice work apple. (though 4 stars for no mains charger)

Having got frustrated that the iPod Mini I'd had for 18 months could only fit half of my music collection, I Upgraded to this 30GB iPod Video.

First suprise was that the iPod Video is only a couple of millimetres wider and taller than the iPod Mini, and it truly is, very very slim.

Two minor things I don't like about the iPod Video: the click wheel - it's not as tactile as the one on the iPod mini and it's less easy to use without looking at it. It's disconcerting to feel the disk start up with a click and a whirr when it's accessing your music.

Everything else about it I love - very quick to sync; the screen clarity and resolution is superb - shows the Casino Royale 'making of' vodcasts beautifully.

We now use both iPods and can synchronise them both with iTunes symultaneously.

Adding a second iPod to my existing iTunes installation really was simple. I already had the latest version of iTunes installed (6.0.5) but, before plugging in the new iPod, I still ran the install disk supplied with the iPod Video 'just in case'. It seamlessly left my existing iTunes and thousands of songs intact and in about two minutes it had installed the iPod and started synchronising.

I now have the iPod mini and iPod Video plugged into separate USB ports and they happily co-exist in iTunes which will synchronise both of them at the same time.

Right click on each iPod in iTunes and choose preferences, this lets you set the synchronise behaviour for each iPod separately. I use a couple of playlists to synchronise a subset of my library to the 4GB mini, but I just let the 30GB video synchronise the whole collection as well as photos from the Adobe Album and contacts from Outlook.

Some stats on the storage: of the 30GB about 27.8GB is actually usable. I've synchronised 2650 songs, about 10mins of video, 68 photos and 100 contacts. That's only used up about 9GB.

Would I buy one again - yes. It was tempting to wait for the iPod widescreen - if you check the website of the American Patent Office the replacement for the click wheel is going to be awesome; but I bet it's not going to be here for a while and I bet it'll be a lot more than £184.