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58 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A few flaws - significantly outweighed by product excellence, 5 Dec 2004
I have long been looking for a quick and easy way to backup and keep by my side my burgeoning photo collection. As the owner of 700 or so CD's the new Ipod photo 60Gb seemed the a logical (if a little expensive!) acquisition.I ordered from the apple store (more expensive than Amazon!) and it arrived a week later direct from China, in the meantime all of my spare time was spent putting my CD's into iTunes on my PC, a job which I still haven't completed, about 200 to go. Even though i am windows through and through I bought an ibook about 3 years ago purely for its beauty, to be honest I didn't like the user interface, the quality and design of the product and packaging were however second to none. The ipod arrived at work and the packaging and quality were up to this high standard - apple really do understand the needs of people who are prepared to pay for quality. I spent a frustrating afternoon trying to get my PC (a 1.3Ghz Dell with WindowsXP home) to install the ipod through a newly acquired usb 2.0 card without success. Windows kept seeing it as a newly connected usb device and running the 'New Hardware found - locate drivers dialogue' there were no drivers as such on the disc. I surfed for answers, tried everything including uninstalling and re-installing all of my usb devices without success. As a seasoned windows user however I remained sanguine, popped the little monkey into my briefcase and waited until I got home. I had recently installed a decent sound card on my identical home PC with a firewire port built in, in went the software, I hooked up the ipod via its dock and hey presto we were in business. I did need to re-format the disk on the ipod which may make installation at work easier next time round. I left it overnight loading the 3000 odd songs, it then took about an hour to load the 4000 photos currently on my pc on Saturday morning (iTunes has to convert them first, but you can set it to keep the full resolution images on the ipod). Once all of this was complete I set the thing up in the dock next to my HIFI and hit Shuffle - I fell to my knees in front of it as the album cover popped up with Miles Davis Seven Steps to Heaven and it started to play track 4 (good taste these people at apple) and off it went, dredging my cd collection for songs that I hadn't heard for years and reinforcing my belief in my impeccable taste in music. Anyone who has a big CD collection will know of the frustrating knowledge that there is so much music that remains unlistened to for literally years. In my opinion this is the best thing about the ipod it keeps your CD collection alive. SOUND QUALITY If you are the sort of muso that likes to move his entire furniture collection to the other side of the room to reduce the sibilance on a particular track in a 25quid Naim CD - then the ipod is not for you. Having read up on the internet about compression rates and listened to samples I went for AAC compression at 160kbps which is pretty close to CD - ON MOST TRACKS!! Some tracks when played on CD and compared make the ipod sound laboured with woolly bass, the whole track seeming just a little distant. I also turned on the 'Sound check' option which keeps all of the tracks at the same volume this too has a muffling effect on some tracks. But mostly the ipod is good to excellent when compared to say a CD walkman. The whole thing is that you can't look upon this device as a 'hifi separate' it really is a new way to get access to your music, much more like a radio station - you lose some sound quality but what you get in return is more than enough compensation. I also spent £25 on a belkin tape adapter for my car - it does hum and the sound quality takes a little bit of a dive, but again - it is more than bearable and what it gives you in terms of music access and portability far outweigh it's failings. You can't hear the hum when the music's playing and you're driving along. Take a look at the Denison Ice link on google. THE PICTURES The quality is good and if you shuffle through the entire library quickly using the wonderful click wheel you get the strange feeling your entire life is flashing in front of your eyes as you flick through 4000 moments in the space of a few minutes. I took it out to a family lunch and it was a really great way to pass photos round, this is so good as so many photographs stay unseen on hard disks nowadays. You can plug it into your TV to get a sound-tracked slide show also great to have on in the background at family occasions. I've said it once and I'm going to say it again, the same applies to the photo side of the ipod, it gets your music and photos off a hard-disc/CD and out into the world to be looked at and listened to. Its sound quality is flawed, the accessories are pricey, you may end up with a nightmare installing it on a PC. BUT!!! It brings your music and photos closer, is made really well, has an unbeatable consumer satisfaction and gadget value and what's more it looks really cool. Take a deep breath, get the plastic out and buy one now... you won't regret it! Now, I wonder what Jane Birkin's doing these days.
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