My Beaver, looking smart with its grey scroll wheel!It was a straight-forward decision for me, after holding back for such a L_O_N_G time. I finally got a 4G iPod (40GB) for myself, after Mich told me that she could get an iPod at a special edu discount. I've been holding back mainly because of cost as I felt that the price of the iPod was too expensive, even though I did purchase a 2G iPod, but that was a gift for Mich.... hee. The price is still a little steep in my opinion, but not as bad.
We took half a day's leave just to collect the iPod. Mich asked whether I was excited about finally being able to own one. Duh! Of course I was! The box that held the iPod was cut open with such a level of precision that a cardiac surgeon would have been proud of! Opening the box itself was a pleasure, even the box, like all things Apple, was very well designed! Included in the package was a 4th generation 40GB model, a dock, FireWire cable, USB2 cable, power adapter, a pair of earbuds and some instructional manuals/CDs. After unwrapping the individually wrapped items, I proceeded to charge the iPod which I named "Beaver" (You must think I'm crazy, don't you?).
A very well designed AC adapter for iPod by Apple.
The iPod Dock, my favourite besides Beaver!Charging was done by connecting one end of the Firewire cable to my Mac and the other to the dock and finally setting the iPod on the dock. You could also connect the FireWire cable directly to the iPod instead of through the dock if you wanted to. An important thing to take note while giving the iPod its first charge is to make sure that it is charged to its maximum capacity, best to let it charge overnight. I'm quite anal about giving all rechargeable batteries a good charge, especially so when it is the first.
While Beaver was happily taking in the charges, it also fired up the iPod updater to update itself with the latest firmware. After a "reboot", Beaver launches iTunes on my Mac and asks whether I would like to sync the music on my Mac to it. Of course, I wanted to! What good would an iPod be without music in it? Heee... a portable HDD lor!
The transfer of 17GB of music went without a hitch, unlike the unpleasant experience that Mich's sister had... on a wintel PC... yikes! After an agonising 4 to 5 hour wait, Beaver was fully charged and ready to show me what it has gotten under its sleeve. Operating Beaver was a breeze, the controls and menu on the LCD screen were all very well thought out. It did not take a rocket scientist to operate it. On the audio front, audio quality was excellent, with clear mids-highs and very controlled lows.
The Audio-out and Dock connector is situated behind the Dock.
The FireWire cable that came with Beaver.I've made it a point to encode all my CDs using 128kbps* AAC; this IMHO offers good sound quality and keep file sizes reasonable. I was using a pair of Shure E2C in-ears and simply loved whatever music it puts out... I've never had such a great listening experience. Cosmetically, Beaver was not much different from its predecessors. It's just a little slimmer with a grey wheel instead of the usual white. I've got nothing against Beaver, though I won't mind it if it were black though.
Hmm... one must have wondered why in the world would I get a 40GB? Isn't 20GB enough for all of your music needs? Well, one thing good about the iPod is that it can be used as an external hard disk drive. It can even be used to startup up a Mac if you install the Mac OS onto it. Cool, right? I'm sorry Wintel users will not be able to enjoy this excellent functionality, bummer. And this is one of the reasons I got the 40GB instead of a 20GB. The other reason is that I'm a serious photographer and produce gigabtyes of RAW digital image files during shoots. So with a 40GB, I can backup these images onto Beaver when required, cool right?
Sexy rear of my Beaver.Oops... there's one more thing! I almost forgot to mention that Beaver also syncs my address book, notes and schedule from my Mac. That makes it a "Personal Data Viewer" (a term Fred coined) which you can take with you. I will not dwell into the games that came with Beaver as I don't think I'll play those games anytime soon.
- * Switched to 192 kbps AAC for encoding since 01 November 2004.