By Jon Hanford
Since the Windows version was released earlier this year, Apple’s iPod has become one of the most popular portable music players available. It’s compact size, simple, elegant interface and gargantuan storage capacity quickly gained the iPod great popularity. Next time you’re walking around campus, count the pairs of little white earbuds on peoples’ heads and see for yourself.
“There are tons of options for sorting my songs to what I feel like listening too, and the contacts are always useful for when I don’t have my phone,” Freshman Nick Bilotta said. “It’s hard to find people saying bad things about the device, probably because it’s near perfect.”
Still not satisfied, Apple released the iPod mini this Friday. The mini has all the features of the original iPod, but with “only” 4 gigs of memory and an even further streamlined control interface, in an even smaller package than the original. The old iPod wasn’t exactly hefty, so you might be wondering how much smaller it could get. The mini is probably about the size of your cell phone at 3.5 inches tall by 2 inches wide, and half an inch thick. It’s small enough to be really portable, but not so small it’s hard to use. The four-gigabyte drive will hold about 72 hours of music, or about 1,000 songs. While not close to the nearly ridiculous 10,000 song capacity of its 40-gigabyte regular iPod cousin, it’s still a whole lot of songs. The internal rechargeable battery is rated for 8 hours of continuous play, but in practice it actually seems to last longer.
The iPod’s biggest problem is it’s price. For the $500 price of the 40 gigabyte model, you could buy enough portable cd players to construct a small addition to your dorm. The iPod mini carries a smaller $250 price for it’s smaller size, but it’s still not what you’d call cheap. Also, after about a year or two the internal rechargeable battery will need to be replaced, which will cost you another $100.
If you have the money to spend on it, the iPod mini is a great thing to have. It’s nice to have a thousand songs at your fingertips wherever you go, and it’s small enough that you really can bring it pretty much everywhere. It integrates with iTunes, Apple’s popular cross-platform Jukebox app, easily importing songs and playlists. It’s nifty to be listening to a playlist in your room, grab the iPod and pick up right where you left off. There’s also the coolness factor, the mini is brand new, and you can expect wows, and questions, and of course envious stares, if that floats your particular boat. The iPod mini is a great looking music player that works great too, but like most things, that greatness comes with a price.