A week ago today my beloved, aging iPod heaved its last. And I mean heaved. It was in my pocket at the time and the drive started knocking so hard I felt it thumping against my leg. I pulled it out of my pocket to see the dreaded folder/exclamation mark icon flash just before it shut down. I reset it again and again. No go.
On Saturday I scoured the boards for info, and it really looked like I had a dead iPod. I tried everything on the Apple site. Setting the thing to disk mode and plugging it in to a PC would hang the PC until the firewire cable was unplugged.
I could probably get this thing repaired, but its old enough that the the cost probably wouldn’t be worth it. As my wife says, it owes me nothing. Who knows? It may be reborn as an iPod Super …
In light of my discovery that I prefer to have less music on my iPod, I decided to go for the iPod Mini 4G which has been upgraded to have 18+ hours of battery life, and uses USB2 instead of firewire. So far I’m immensely happy with it, but not with my case. I bought a Marware SportSuit Sleeve, which was the only non-silicon option available. Its alright, except that putting the mini in this case often dislodges the headphone jack, pausing the iPod. Then you have to pull everything out and start again. Its annoying. I’m also worried that I’m going to put a lot of stress on the headphone jack. As soon as I find something better, I’m ditching this thing.
UPDATE: … and I did. The Innopocket Metal Deluxe Case. Its light weight, doesn’t add much bulk, and has a fully detachable post for the belt clip I’m never going to use. The iPod slides around a bit in it, particularly when attaching the dock connector, but I don’t think its going to cause any harm.