by Koresh
A friend and I were discussing all the different Apple iPod varieties and so I'll share some buying tips with you concerning iPods. The 5th generation iPods are here and I've noticed people have a hard time deciding which one to get. You have the 3 genres:
iPod with Video (30 and 60 gig) with respective prices of $299 and $399
iPod Nano (1, 2 and 4 gig)with respective prices of $149, $199 and $249
iPod Shuffle (512mb and 1 gb) Thankfully, shuffles are now being discontinued!
60 gb -will hold approx. 15,000 songs
30 gb - will hold approx. 7,500 songs
4 gb - will hold approx. 1,000 songs
2 gb - will hold approx. 500 songs
1 gb- will hold approx. 250 songs
512 mb - will hold approx. 125 songs
First of all, the Shuffles don't have a display. Plan on your music playing in random order without knowing what is coming up next. They are expensive as well, more expensive than the other models. This is were people scratch their heads. The shuffles are the biggest rip-off out of the iPods. There is no hard-drive inside of them. You are paying $100 for 1gb of solid state memory. That's outrageous. You're getting less for your money paying $70 for 512mb.
Same thing with the Nano, except you get a color display. A lot of people don't know that the NANO DOES NOT PLAY VIDEO. Again, you're paying $100 a gb, which is outrageous. You wouldn't buy a computer hard drive for that price would you? Imagine how expensive computers would be if 1 gig was $100. The 4gb iPod Nano for $249 is a slightly better deal but at that point why wouldn't you just get the 30 gb with video for $299? You're then paying $10 a gb which is much better as far as value added merchandise goes. The Nano LCD displays crack very easily too! All iPod displays (like cellphones) are sensitive to heat, cold and bending. The Nano's displays are extra senstive due to the thinness.
The iPod Video will not take just any video. You must download Quicktime 7.03 Pro or buy off of iTunes or a 3rd party site. There is 3rd party software that may convert certain video formats to the iPod Video format (H.264/MPEG-4 encoded videos with AAC audio tracks). It's most important to note that for playing video directly on your iPod, you're limited to a resolution of 320x240 @ 768 Kbps on H.264 and 480x480 @ 2.5Mbps, and an AAC audio bit rate up to 160 Kbps @ 48 Khz. Same format that the Playstation Portable uses, by the way!
Just FYI. The battery on the iPod Video gets drained really fast. So buy an AC charger and buy a car charger as well if you're going to be using it in a vehicle.
Note - You can use a camcorder cable from Radio Shack instead of Apple's Video cable and save some money. Apple switches the yellow (video cable) and the red (audio cable). So in essence, the red is now the video cable and they yellow is the audio. By buying the camcorder cable at Radio Shack, you will save about $13 or more!
Any questions? Send me a message, I'll try and give you more advice or help.