iPod photo lets you carry all of your music and digital photos wherever you goup to 15,000 songs, 25,000 photos or any combination in between. The vivid color screen displays crisp, clear images both indoors and outdoors. Enjoy up to 15 hours of battery life for music and up to 5 hours for slideshows. View album art, rock out to your favorite songs and share slideshows anywhere with friends and family. Available in a 60GB capacity, the ultimate digital music player brings all your music and photos into focus. One-year limited warranty.
1 the scoop on the good, the bad, and the ugly
Apple Computer's iPod Photo: GOOD.
Getting sucked into an unscrupulous marketing ploy: BAD.
The flood of unwanted email, telemarketing calls, and faxes you'll receive after signing up for an "offer": UGLY!!
2 sign up if you want junk mail "to the next level"
Don't make the same mistake I did! I signed up for one of those get-iPod-free "offers" that are continually being posted here.
Within one day, I received over 200 spam emails and 15 telemarketing calls. What a pain. I guess there really is something to the saying "you can't get something for nothing".
I hope everybody here will learn from my extremely bad experience and avoid these ridiculous pyramid schemes.
The 60Gb iPod Photo is a great gadget. It's too bad they're being used as bait by unethical people.
3 The truth for prospective buyers
My wife bought me this for my birthday. I noticed that some of my cds were deteriorating, and wanted to digitize my library. My friends raved about this gizmo so she obliged me. Here is the whole story.
This is a marvelous invention, one actually fortunate consequence of our technology mania outside of the medical field. That being said, it has flaws. To use Apples Lossless Encoder which recreates cd quality sound, you will not get anywhere near 15,000 songs, more like 4-6000 max. Next, ITunes sucks. Pardon my crassness, but you need to have a mirror version of what is on your IPod on your pc for maximum enjoyment, ease of organization, auto-synch, or other benefits extolled by Apple. In short, if you have a huge library and would like to digitize and preserve the master copies in storage, take this into account. Itunes must be a revelation if you have a mini or a shuffle, but if you are condidering an IPod this large, it gets unwieldy. I had to buy a 100 gig external hardrive to send the music too (since I will probably get a new pc soon and don't feel like transferring the songs).
I am sure that any 5 year old or high school student can provide a go around or a better way to use technology, but if you are an audio-nut but not a computer-nut, this gadget is as close to perfect as it gets.
4 Great, not Perfect
"Yeah, its an iPod." Then you get to boast about the 60 GB and that wears thin pretty fast. But you have to admit its a damn good looking player. You've read the millions of reviews so I'll only bore you with my thoughts:
$450 and no case? The dock may have been low on the list of usefulness, but come on Apple... this thing scratches if you look at it hard. So the REAL price of this player is more like $490 after you get the required case.
It takes a day to get used to the controls. My wife was so frustrated she tossed it aside and never looked back. The controls are simplified to the point of complexity. Menu is power on (but not power off, that's Play/Pause) but its also back... You get used to it, but I wouldn't sell it as a feature.
The EQ is worthless. I found that ROCK works best and everything else sounds muffled or distorted. It's also a pain to browse EQ settings for the currently playing song. You have to navigate back a couple of menus then into settings then spin down to EQ. After selecting an EQ setting, you drop back to the settings menu. If you don't like that EQ setting, you have to go back into the EQ menu and start the dance all over. Why cant the EQ settings apply live as I spin down them? The song will end before you have time to try them all...
Everyone loves the touch wheel and so do I until you realize you don't remember the group, you have 7800 songs and the one you are looking for begins with a "Z". After about 15 fast laps around the touch wheel it does accelerate, but I wish there was a faster way...
The battery life for me is pretty much as Apple stated. I am concerned that sometime next year after the warranty expires the battery will go poof and die. Apple hasn't done a good job making people like me feel better about the longevity of an iPod. Still, I did take a chance.
I like the Album art when playing. When I used to play CD's (or god bless - my vinyl), I would always have the cover there with me to look at. Something feels more natural having it displayed.
All in all, if you can convince yourself that a portable music player should cost $450/$490 then this is definitely one of the best ones to get, even with its quirks.
5 The truth about iPod "offers"
Don't fall for the "get an iPod for free" scams in the fake "reviews" posted here. It's spammers harvesting email addresses for their ridiculous products.
Think about it for a moment. How can somebody afford to give away $250+ gadgets just for signing up for some trial offers? Answer: they can't!
The San Francisco Chronicle also says these offers are bogus. Search sfgate.com or Google for "David Lazarus Free iPod not really" and you will see what the people running these programs are really doing.
6 A Must Have Gadget!!!!!
I just bought this baby today and to be brief:
Amazing quality sound
Amazing screen and picture resolution
More affordable price
Great as a portable drive
Easy set up and syncing with iPhoto and iTunes
Overall a great package that updates the 4G iPod. Got to love the color screen. Battery life. If you have the funds, you won't be dissaointed. AMAZING!
7 Great deal
I purchased the 60 gb ipod photo about 4 months ago, and I have been loving it ever since. I not only use it as a portable player, but use it in my car so that I never have to buy or burn a cd ever again. I also got an fm tuner so that when I'm at my house, or at a party, I can listen to any song on any radio.
I also have loaded pictures on it, and they look great. All you do is hook it up to any tv with output jacks and your ready to go. You can make slide shows on there through your computer and put songs to them. I have seen people spend a lot of money for slide shows with music on them for weddings and many other things. The quality that you have is better than any vhs that amy company could make. It is dvd quality.
I think that if you are debating whether to get this or some other brand, I would go for the ipod. Now they have a 40 gb ipod photo, just in case you don't think that you will need this much space.
