Reports by Consumers

Just to take the iPod as an example. A 16GB iPod touch will set you back $399 (€253). In Ireland it is €369. Even if you knock off the 21% tax the Irish price is 20% more than the US one.

Now? Who do you know that doesn’t have a few thousand songs in their collection? The existence of the iPod, and any similar hard-drive equipped music device, is predicated on people possessing thousands upon thousands of songs. Millions of such devices have been sold.

now i know what you’re thinking. if you’re gonna spend $250 on an mp3 player, might as well protect it. yes, i think that’s a brilliant idea. before the ipod, the only “electronics” accessories sold were different colored bodies for those horrid nokia phones. there’s a whole market dedicated to “pimpin” your ipod. but you really have to think of your target audience for this gift. really. studies show that 85.3% of ipod ownder do not own or care to own anything in “fuzzy pink”.

So far black Friday has treated us well with great savings from Apple. For today, and only today, most of the iPods and other accessories are on sale. As you can see, you can save $21 on an iPod, and you can save up to $50 on other products.

I totally agree with his comments about The Matrix, and looking over the film selection, it looks like perhaps they don’t have distribution deals with the studios yet to allow much of a selection. I’ve been surprised how TV has broken out of the proverbial box to lead digital downloads. Not that I do it, but I think if I missed the latest Lost episode, I’d happily download it for $1.99 (especially if I had an iPod that I could watch it on). Yet, ABC offers Lost for free on its website after it airs, and I have watched episodes there.

That said, I did stumble across this little gem of a product, from O2-Cool: the iFan. Flavor Flav had his giant clocks; I've now got my giant iPod-looking fan. And while the design is a lawsuit waiting to happen, the strangest thing about it is it's very existence. Are there a great many people suffering the pangs of neck sweats? The bearded, perhaps, and the extremely obese... thoughts, anyone?

If television seems stale and irrelevant, so are much of the goods on offer in the shops. The Xbox 360 is only the latest of many must-have items which on brief examination has failed to live up to its hype. As for wide screen TV's, how many people have the space in their Noddy-box living-rooms to install such a thing? As for all the other gizmos - the Nano-Ipod with video for example - launched so quickly after the original Ipod, people who had bought the former simply felt cheated - the public at large are now becoming so tired of having to keep up, they are simply turning away. My old radio works okay and has done for years… do I really need to go digital? No one I know ever talks about Radio 6,7, One Extra, and however many other niche stations can be found along the dial. If they're not part of the social vernacular who gives a damn whether you can tune into them or not?

With the instant gratification of messenging systems such as AIM, iChat and MSN messenger, blogs, and sites such as facebook.com and myspace.com, and cell phones that do everything, it seems that everyone is walking around with one hand on a keyboard and the other holding cell phone. Students walk around campus jamming to iPods and avoiding human contact.

Apple recently reported $320 million in profits for the last quarter, during which they sold 6.2 million iPods. Given a current world population of 6.5 billion, that means that very nearly 1 of every 1000 people in the world bought an iPod last quarter, which is interesting, considering that lots of people have been predicting the iPod's imminent demise due to a) cheaper competition, b) market saturation, and c) lack of compatibility with Microsoft's Media Player.

While I do not share CD's I purchase with others, I am concerned that certain types of copy protection will prevent my copyng tracks from a purchased CD onto, say, an Apple iPod, as is the case with certain types of copy protection. Naturally, I would want to know about such "crippling" features in advance so that I can avoid such purchases; why buy something I cannot use?

This morning my ice>Link:iPod arrived. I’ve tried listening to the iPod in the car, using both an iTrip and a casette adaptor thing, but the reception on the iTrip keeps changing as I drive through the mountains on the way home and the casette thing is just crap. This baby plugs into the CD changer port in the back of your car radio and then into your iPod. Now I can use the controls of my radio to control the ipod and listen with awesome sound quality. If you’ve got an iPod don’t even bother buying aCD shuttle. Just get one of these. It’s cheaper than a shuttle and better.

You have your iPod. You have the great outdoors, but hold on there’s no where to charge my lovely iPod so I can listen to my tunes. Solved! The Solio is a wicked Solar Powered battery pack for your iPod or iPod Mini. You can charge the Solio using the Sun or at a mains charger. This means you can head out with a spare power supply and if that runs out just leave the Solio in the sun to solar re-charge and you will be able to charge your iPod or iPod mini off it again and again.

CNN Money reports buyers of early generation iPods may receive $50 in store credit or cash compensation as part of a proposed class action settlement against Apple Computer, according to one of the law firms representing plaintiffs in the case.

Lately I’ve been using my iPod in conjunction with some hour long natural sound tracks (I like raindrops) from the iTMS. They really help me relax and lessen my anxiety. Here’s the deal though. On the iTunes Music Store, any track longer than 10 minutes is only available if you buy the album. Since these tracks are about one hour, it’s one track per album. So that’s about $8-$10 a track. That’s a pretty penny.

What if Opra invited Harry Potter and Pokemon on to her show to explain how to use a Macintosh, an iPod, Voice Over IP, Bluetooth, Skype, and Vonage? SURELY it would be a hit episode?

A buddy of mine just bought an iriver mp3 player and was having a hard time finding a compatible music download service. I figure if he had difficulty, then chances are there are a bunch of other people out there experiencing the same problem. So here's a list that will help out.

Late last year, Reigncom put out the iRiver H10, a five-gigabyte HDD model, after 10 months of research and development, to challenge Apple’s iPod mini. Weighing 100 grams and about the size of a business card case, the iRiver H10 can store up to 1,200 songs, 200 more than the iPod mini. It is equipped with a 1.5-inch color liquid crystal display (LCD) screen, so that users can look at digital pictures or read e-books while listening to music. At the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates named the iRiver MP3 player as an outstanding product. Reigncom says its primary goal is to break Apple’s dominance in the MP3 player market.

But, my recent visit to eq-life sold me. Being the typical female consumer of a fairly high ticket item, I had:

* asked friends about their experiences with iPods,
* read stories like Michele's,
* done some research online,
* and talked with a few more friends, before I was ready.

The whole MP3 thing is new to me and I wanted to get lots of information and feel fairly comfortable that I would really use it (and make it worth the investment) before I handed over my debit card. It helped that there were no other MP3 players to distract me on the shelves at eq-life (editing product selection at retail stores is counterintuitive, but it really works for some women) and that the sales guy was right there to answer any last minute questions.

This consumer reports on the full line of new iPods. Click through for the best news: lower prices.

Soon, scientists tell us, there will be more iPods than there are protons in our galaxy. Seriously. They're that popular.

Today Apple released some new iPods. Yes, yes, you get more for the same money, or the same for less money. Apple's been doing that for four years now.