Apple 40 GB iPod M9245LL/A

[Archived in $400 - $500, Apple Computer, Audio, Over 21 GB Jukeboxes, Products, iPod]

Manufacturer: Apple Computer
Price at amazon.com: $399.99
Usually ships in 24 hours

Used & new from $285.00




Product Features:

• 40 GB model holds up to 10,000 songs; supports MP3, AAC, WAV, MP3 VBR, Audible (6), and AIFF formats
• Mac and Windows compatible; FireWire and USB 2.0 interface for fastest digital transfer available
• Included docking station makes charging and synching easy
• More than 8 hour battery life on a 3 hour charge (1-hour fast charge to 80% capacity)
• Features redesigned and backlit navigation; includes dock, wired remote control, earbud headphones, carrying case, and AC adapter

Product Description:

40GB hard drive holds approximately: * 1,333 hours of music at 64 kbps * 666 hours at 128 kbps * other bitrates also supported

Average Customer Rating:

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Comment: Steve Jobs wants you to be cool! Rating:
Apple's always at the top of their game - whatever game that is - and this top of the line iPod is no exception. Let's pause a moment for the analysis:

40 GB. That's roughly 40,000 megabytes. Using today's AAC or mp3 music encoding technology, a 72 minute album rarely consumes more than 80 megabytes - even at near-CD quality. What does that mean to you? Yeah, you did the math right - 500 albums. You could sit there and play music 24/7 for nearly a month without repeating. Or head down to your local club and be DJ for the night - just slip the iPod out of your pocket and plug into the sound system!

OK, so it'll hold all your music. But what the numbers don't tell you is that it holds your music in STYLE. About the size of a stack of 8 credit cards, and only a trifle heavier, this'll fit on your belt, in your sleeve, in your backpack's cellphone pocket, in your purse, or wherever else you want to put it with no hassle. The controls lock so jostling around doesn't accidently push buttons. And what cool buttons they are - the 'scrollwheel pad' and no-click touchbuttons make for an easy, fun and durable interface.

Also, the thing just looks darn cool - with its white front, silver back, and little backlit screen, it's got instant 'bling bling' credibility, day or night.

It comes with everything you need - belt clip, earbuds, dock to recharge the battery and transfer music over from your Firewire- or USB 2.0-equipped computer. But I'd recommend two additions: first, the optional FireWire cable makes this into a portable 40G hard drive, highly useful in today's information age. (I carry a copy of the human genome around on mine.) Second, ditch the included headphones and grab a pair of the Sony neodymium-magnet earbuds, model #MDR-EX70LP. They transform your iPod from merely great to INSANELY great.

Cool tunes to ya, my friend!

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Comment: i love my iPod more than i love my mother Rating:
It's impossible to stress how awesome the iPod is! Cheaper than drugs! Lasts longer than sex! Low in carbs! And prettier than 93% of the girls I ever dated.

You can read a hundred other reviews about its ease of use, its multi-functionality, its sleek design, its intuitive interface. Here's some real world Q&A after my first month with my iPod:

"Do I really need 40 GB?"

If you're like me, you do. I have somewhere around 1300 CDs in my collection, and I've already loaded 6298 songs onto the iPod. Of course, I don't listen to them all, but the great thing about the iPod is you start to remember old songs you'd totally forgotten about. Remember Arcadia's "Election Day"? Or MC 900 Ft Jesus' "If I Only Had a Brain"? Or X's "White Girl"? Or Big Audio Dynamite's "Rush"? Neither did I, but put the iPod on random shuffle, and it's about the best radio station you ever heard.

"I download a lot of music. What about that?"

If you download a lot of music ILLEGALLY (tsk), then you need to go through a re-tag your MP3s so that the iPod can read them. This is almost a fulltime job. I recommened "TAG und RENAME" which I got from download.com for free. You can rename huge batches of MP3s at a time, and if you have the full album track list, it intuitively tags them for you. It still took me WEEKS. But in searching my hard drive, I'm finding things that I didn't even know I downloaded. Like, why did I download the X-Rated version of Duran Duran's "Girls on Film" video three times?? Who knows.

"I want to run/excercise/carry it places. Shouldn't I get the mini?"

I thought this too, but the 40 GB iPod is the size of a deck of cards. It weighs less than a Zippo lighter. It's slimmer than my cell phone, and slides right into my hip pocket. Screw the mini. Get the big boy, you sissy.

"What accessories do I need?"

The 40 GB comes with the dock, which lets you connect it right to the auxilliary jack on your stereo, as long as you have a cord, which you can buy at Radioshack for $5. And you can use any old cassette adapter to hook the iPod into the stereo in your car. You don't need to buy anything special here. A few missing niceties would be a decent manual (the manual it comes with is terrible; I'm going to have to get one of the "Missing Manual" books). Also, the case it comes with is great for clipping it to your hip, but doesn't allow access to the buttons. Oh, and the headphones are terrible. Buy new headphones too.

"My harddrive is smaller than 40 GB. Since the iPod autosyncs with iTunes, does this mean I can't fill my harddrive?"

I wondered about this when I first bought the iPod. My harddrive is only 20GB, and on its default setting, iTunes synchronizes whatever songs are on your iPod to whatever tunes are on your harddrive. To get around this, all you need to do is turn off the default and drag and drop songs manually. It works much better.

And in order to simplify everything, I ripped all of my CDs as MP3s first, and then burned the MP3s to data CDs. This cab be a LENGTHY process (like...months). But then you can just load the iPod directly from your CDRs. And should your iPod ever crash, you can later reinstall all of MP3s effortlessly, without having to rip all of your CDs again.

For the first couple of months, you may feel like you're working on your iPod in every spare moment: ripping CDs, editing MP3 tags, loading songs, editing playlists. But the payoff is so totally freaking worth it. I LOVE MY IPOD!

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Comment: There simply is no better Rating:
Most MP3 player's are the complete and utter waste of money, as they cannot store enough music to encompass a single CD, and transferring songs takes eons. The iPod is simply amazing as it can store 500+ CDs (8000+ songs) for the 40GB version, and transfer songs roughly 10 to 12 times faster through the zippy Firewire or USB2.0 connection.

I got the one for Windows, originally bundled with MusicMatch Jukebox. That program has one of the more horrific and cumbersome interfaces that I have ever used. Fortunately, with iTunes for Windows this is no longer an issue. The iTunes program is the ONLY commercial FREE software that allows one to rip CDs in using MP3 format. It works beautifully for archiving music and seemlessly sychronizing with the iPod, and of course being Apple, it has an wonderfully intuitive interface.

Besides the highlights mentioned, another nice tidbit is that there are PDA-like facilities to view notes, calendar info, and contact info. I export my contacts in Outlook to VCard format (.vcf) and copy them to the contact folder on the iPod, and voila, I got contact info.

One uncanny thing about the iPod is that is supports many languages including C-J-K (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) for both displaying music files in those languages, but also contact information. This makes it the **ONLY** device that can display all those languages for PDA purposes and music playback purposes. The iTunes for Windows also supports C-J-K languages as well, making it the **ONLY** MP3 player (except the privacy invading WMP) that can work with those languages.

My only minor complaint is that I wish there was more developer information so that I could more easily develop programs for the iPod.

Posted at November 11, 2003 07:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)