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brismithejedi's Review
It's the best brand of MP3 player in a cheap and tiny package!
always listening to music, budget-conscious, technically savvy, a very pleased iPod owner!, music lover, long-time computer user, pc-user
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AUG
24
2007
Apple - Ipod Shuffle 1GB (1st. Gen.) Mp3 Player —
I decided to get into the MP3 player scene about two years when I decided I could get an MP3 player at a decent price. I decided upon the Shuffle for several reasons:1. In reading reveiws the iPods always got the best.
2. At the time, I was doing paint work which is rather strenuous work so I wanted something small and without a hard drive with moving parts.
3. It was ridiculously small so I could hang it around my neck and not even notice it.
4. It was the cheapest of the iPods with flash. The Nanos just came out and they were rather expensive. For paint work, it didn't make much sense to have an iPod with a screen either as the screen would get dirty quick.
At the time, I had about 30GB of music, so I knew I couldn't put a whole lot on the device. However, I knew that it would be enough to last me an 8 to 10 hour day.
Once I got the device, I was amazed at just how small it was. It was shorter than my index finger! It was also mostly flat and I noticed that the buttons could be locked so that if they got pressed while doing other activities it wouldn't affect the playback. I knew that this was going to be perfect for what I was doing.
At first, I wasn't a big fan of iTunes. I'm a PC user and sometimes Mac software seems completely counter-intuitive. It took me a while to really appreciate it and understand all of it's features. Now, though, I have iTunes on every computer that I interact with and it's my music player of choice.
The Shuffle, since it doesn't have a screen, allows you to put songs onto it from iTunes on it's playlist. The switch on the device will let you select "Play in Order" or "Shuffle". If you have it on "Play in Order" then it will play the songs in the order in which they show on the playlist in iTunes. If you switch to "Shuffle" then it will just play songs randomly from the playlist on the Shuffle. Also, with iTunes, you can choose an "Autofill" option which randomly chooses songs from your library and fills the drive up with these. I've definitely enjoyed the use of this function as it turns my Shuffle into "brismithejedi radio - no commercials and no crap".
The switch is kind of cool, but also kind of a pain. It's nice that it's flat and smooth to complete the look of the iPod, but I've always found it hard to hit it just right to go to the "play in order" click instead of pushing too hard and sending it into "shuffle". This is a bit frustrating because if you put it on shuffle and then switch it back to "play in order" you may be somewhere completely in the middle of your playlist or who knows where. You almost for sure won't be where you left off. The good thing about it though is that, because it's flat, it's hard to hit it against anything else and accidentally switch it to something else.
The Shuffle came with a lanyard, which I've used every day with the device and a USB cap. The lanyard also caps the USB port. The headphones that came with it had excellent sound quality, but they wore out on me pretty quick. I'm sure this was due to the line of work that I was in though. They seemed to be very good quality and were relatively comfortable despite being earbuds.
The device has always held over 8 hours worth of music for me so it's great for workdays. Generally, I can fit around 10+ hours on there depending upon the bit rate of the tracks.
The other nice thing about the device is that it charges off of the USB port so no other charger is needed. It doesn't take very long to charge either as long as you have USB 2.0.
Other than the switch, the only other complaint I would have with the device is that sometimes if you power the device off and then power it back on later it sometimes seems to lose track of where you were in your playlist and just stick you somewhere completely random. This doesn't seem to be related to accidentally switching it to "Shuffle" either. This has always bugged when it happens, it's not all the time, as I like to listen to albums as a whole. I always find myself wasting several minutes trying to skip around back to where I was, which is definitely hard to do since you don't have a screen to tell you where you are in your playlist. You just have to use your memory.
The one other problem I had was that the first Shuffle I had barely lasted 4 months. I was doing some yard work with the device on and just all of a sudden it shut off. Then, using the switch, I couldn't even get it to power on. After using Apple's online troubleshooter I determined it was defective. This was pretty disappointing, but all I had to do was provide a credit card number (it wasn't charged) and they sent out a replacement shuffle (refurb, of course) within a few days and then I sent them back my Shuffle. This refurb shuffle has been working perfectly for over a year now.
In summary, if you're looking for a small, durable, and inexpensive iPod or MP3 player that uses flash memory then you can't go wrong with the iPod Shuffle (the new ones are even smaller!). If you're really concerned about playback order or you want to skip to certain songs or want to carry your whole library around with you, then you ought to look into a larger iPod with more storage space. Despite the few flaws, I would still highly recommend this device!
Last edited on Aug 24, 2007
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