The many Joys of iPod ownership

Having gotten my iPod a few days ago, I am now living with the wonders of iPod ownership. To start out with, I spent two solid days ripping CDs that I have onto iTunes, which came with Mac OSX. And what did I get for my troubles? Less that 2 Gig's worth of music! And this is after ripping over 500 songs!

It never crossed my mind before, but... 30 Gigs is a *lot* of space for music! I could put in my whole CD library, plus everything I have on tape and still not make a major dent in my iPod. And let's face it... I have *tons* of CDs.

I did purchase 2 songs from the iTunes store, both from the band Five for Fighting, "100 Years" and "Superman". And one video, "Vogue" by Madonna. Unfortunately, the video, which took forever to download on my dial-up connection, didn't want to work with my iPod. Major sour expression, there.

What I really love about my iPod is how it has exposed me to songs I didn't know about on the albums I had. One of the CD's I ripped was the "Vampire Princess Miyu Television Series Soundtrack". I already loved the opening theme and the ending theme "Miyu Yachiyo", which means "Miyu Eternal" or "Miyu Forever" or, more literally, "Miyu of the Thousand Nights". But ripping the entire soundtrack has exposed me to a song called "Temari Uta", or "The Round Ball Song", which is absolutely beautiful. If you have an iPod, I suggest you download the song (if you can).

The other great thing about the iPod is how it allows you to take the music you love with you without lugging around massive quantities of CDs and a player, or tapes and a player for those. All you need is your iPod, and the included earphones, and you're good to go. You can take your music anywhere... on the train, in the car, in someone else's car, even out into the wilderness, if you so desire.

Now, the drawbacks...

The battery life of the iPod, even a 30 Gig monster like mine, is only about 5 hours. So, while you can take your iPod anywhere, you can't expect it to play for a really long time. I wouldn't mind if the iPod were slightly larger or thicker, if it meant a longer battery life. I mean, if you have 3 days worth of music, how much fun is it to have a battery that only lasts 5 hours? And you can't just swap batteries in and out like you would on a portable CD player or tape player. These batteries are inside the iPod and can't be removed or swapped. To recharge your iPod, you just plug it into any USB port on a running computer, using the included connector. To disconnect the iPod after it has finished charging, you must unmount the iPod from the system. So, you have great freedom to bring your iPod everywhere, but it will only play 5 hours of music.

Another drawback is that lovely, shiny case and screen, which are apparently easily scratched. I took the precaution of buying an iPod holder, which comes with a strap on the back so you can affix it to your belt, and a flap that closes over the whole thing to protect the wheel and screen. I think Apple should have made the case and screen just a bit more rugged, but I haven't had any problems... yet.

So, there you go. 2 days persepective on owning an iPod. Of course, your mileage may vary.