Apple iPod 15GB - 3rd Generation [M8946B/A]

Initially I thought about buying the 10gig version, but going for the 15Gig version have me a very nice carrying case – with belt attachment! – and the desirable cradle which allows for much easier and much more attractive display, and smoother downloads… well I think so anyway. 30Gigs would have given me twice as much storage, but I did think that it would be more space than my present music collection required. And I have not been proved wrong.

The fact that you can fit 15gigs on music onto the Ipod is brilliant for those who already have a well-labelled and well stocked PC-based music collection. But for others, for whom the task of filling the Ipod will first require the filling of their PC with music, the loading of the Ipod may be an onerous one.

Having just recently got a new PC I had this task. Although downloading CDs to my PC takes little time unless I was connected to the internet I had to manually enter every song and album title after each album had been uploaded. Fun this was not. Although the use of Firewire made the synching between PC and Ipod very fast. the task of filling my Ipod stilltook up most of a weekend and added a sizeable fee to my phone bill, but ultimately I have to say it was worth it.

Yes, Ipods are an Apple product, and yes they probably do work a bit better with Itunes than they do with MusicMatch – the media player PC users have to use, but this should not put off any non-Mac users, as this is but a small complaint. The Ipod’s new features, including the above, and the ability to create playlists on the go, play solitaire, and see the screen in the dark are great benefits, making previous models look archaic already.

I have not tested the theory out yet but I estimate that I have a good seven straight days worth of music at my disposal – and packaged in a box that one a design award for its style. My Ipod is the envy of all my friends, but part with it I would not. In the world of MP3 players nothing comes close – maybe in capacity, but in style? No. And will anything ever come closer? Only Ipod v.3 I’ll wager.

It looks absolutely fantastic, with it's sleek design and it's mirror back, and its very small for such a big drive. 15 gigs of space has to be enough for pretty much anyone, I have 6 gigs of mp3 and wma format music on my pc, which is about 4 or 5 days worth. Work out how long the whole 25 gigs will go on for!
On the website it claims to be able to hold about 1.5 weeks worth of music, or 7500 songs, but only with quite low quality - about 64k/sec. As lots of people including myself use 96 or 128k then this amount will drop, but it's still 4 or 5 days solid- more than enough for portable music.
I never put that much on anyway, as flicking through the lists on the ipod takes a while if you have lots of different artists and albums. I tend to put on about a day of my favourite music, which takes me about a week to get through. I really only listen to it while travelling-but I have started to use it a lot more because it's much better than changing CDs every hour or so.
After the end of the week I can just plug it back into the cradle next to my pc, and it updates my song lists automatically. The software that it comes with does tend to be a bit annoying, as I usually use Windows Media Player, but ipod is only compatible with Music-Match Jukebox. You can't drag and drop on My Computer, even though the ipod comes up as another Removable drive. Instead, you can store normal files like documents or videos etc. on the hard drive that cannot be viewed on the ipod's lists. This is useful, because I can keep videos etc. without it coming up on the ipod play list, as I have loads of free space.

The layout of the program is a bit confusing, but after a while you get used to it. The annoying thing is transferring music to the program. It usually makes mistakes when inserting the names of the tracks, making big spaces after artist and track names, which come up on the ipod. This can mean that you apparently have maybe 4 or 5 different names of the same artist.
Besides the niggles, it still works fine after a bit of tuning, and I use it all the time for convenience.

While using the ipod, it's onboard display is amazingly good, considering it's size. The wheel takes a bit of getting used to, and can be a bit unresponsive if you scroll up only one artist, song etc. However, it is incredibly simple to select your music through the series of menus that are customisable to show only what you want to see. For example, I have removed the genre and composer buttons that I don't use from the browse menu (Where you access your music).
When playing, the screen displays the song name, artist and album as well as a very cute bar showing how far you are into the song and how long there is left. Tapping the middle button once allows you to fast-forward through the song with the wheel, and twice lets you set your rating for the song-with 5 stars.

OK, there are a few things that could be better with the ipod. The wheel could be a little responsive and being able to place songs into personal play lists on the ipod would be useful. You have an 'On-The-Go' play list that you can put songs in while you are away from the computer, but once they are in there you cannot remove them. It is only reset when you connect it to the computer, which resets it. You can only make new play lists when connected to the computer, and you cannot edit track names while disconnected either. This is a bit annoying as it means removing the track fro the ipod, renaming it on the software and then putting it back on, when it would be much easier to do it by putting the letters in with the wheel if it is just a small error you didn't notice when it was connected.

Overall, after using it for 2 weeks, I have found that the very few things wrong are FAR outweighed by the shear brilliance that has gone into this little thing. I would recommend it to anyone, and anyone with money should buy it.