Is now the time to get an iPod?

Question

Hello everyone, So I've been avoiding getting an ipod for several years due to a number of reasons. But now I'm finally giving some serious thought into it, with the release of the ipod Classic.
While researching I ran into this forum, and am shocked at all the problems people are experiencing with it. Now I know its a common thing for more people to come online with complaints and problems then there are for people who come online with praises and good news. Creating the illusion that every 4 out of 5 people have problems. Its like that with all product forums. But just to make sure, are there any people here who haven't not experienced any problems at all with thier ipod Classics?
I also would like to explain how I would use my ipod if I had one, and if you can tell me what type of experience/performance I'd get from my ipod in return.
First off I'm a Windows XP user, with a large collection of fully tagged MP3s, in the 200vbr-320cbr bit rates by entire albums. About 50 GBs worth so far.
All my music is primarily movie soundtracks such as Star Wars, Conan, Batman and some Spoken Word stuff.
I plan on listening with a pair of $100 Super.fi Studio 3 IEMs Becuase sound quality is very important to me. And I plan to also have some sort of EQ enabled preferable customed.
Photos (other than album artwork), and videos are not important to me at all.
And I'd also expect to put heavy usage in to the ipod, skipping through tracks and seeking through songs alot.
Now with this type of usage what can I expect as far is performance, battery life, sound quality and usability?

Answer 1

it's really difficult to say ... if I were you I would wait until firmware 1.0.3 releases and then have a look at what it's fixing.
Your story sounds a bit like mine. Didn't want an iPod for several years and bought a classic now So I just list what I find positive and negative, you have to decide for yourself in the end. First the positive stuff:
• The iPod uses very good hardware. Long battery lifetime, very good display, fast harddrive.
• Very easy-to-use interface. Very intuative. You don't really need a manual for 90% of the stuff you can do with it since it's so easy to use
• Always found the click-wheel a little strange, but after one day or so it's really quick and nice to go through menus like that.
• Nicely designed (in my opinion)
• With iTunes you got a flawless connection to your PC: All the ratings and playcounts and skipcounts and stuff are transfered to iTunes and vice versa. So the play/skipcounts are real, not ONLY what you listened to on your iPod or ONLY what you listened to on your iTunes. You can even send the stuff you listened to on your iPod to last.fm (if you know/use that site)
• If your songs are probably tagged that's good, because the iPod uses ID3-Tags only and no kind of folder structure, so this is very important.
• If you listen and skip a lot that can enhance your music-listening-behaviour. You can create "smart playlist" which select songs depending on a rating you gave the song (1 to 5 stars, you can rate in iTunes and on-the-go using your iPod), how much you played a song and how often you skipped it.
• Heavy usage is absolutly no problem. The iPod handles that just fine and because of the long battery life (30-40 hours) this should be no problem at all.
So, there are still some downsides. I hope that with a future firmware most - if not all - of that issues are fixed, but some of them are serious:
• There seem to be faulty products in the stores. Some people buy a new iPod and it does not work correctly. They get a new one from the store which works perfectly fine. This seems to happen to a lot of people.
• If you play games on your iPod the ratings/playcounts/skipcounts since your last sync with iTunes will not transfer correctly when you sync. This will probably be fixed in the new firmware
• Both clickwheel and menus are a little slow sometimes. It was much slower with firmware 1.0.0 and got a lot better with the new firmware 1.0.2, but the clickwheel is still a little jumpy and the menus sometimes (not always) need like 1-2 seconds to load. It's nothing too serious, I can work with my iTunes perfectly fine that way, but it can be annoying from time to time.
• Of course the thing people seem to be afraid of the most: The battery-draining issue. Yeah, it happens. BUT! It happens only very very rarely and you can notice it when it happens, since the hard drive of your iPod is still spinning when you turn it off and you can just hear that. If the hard drive is spinning over 2-3 seconds after you turned off the ipod, just turn it on, wait a second, turn it off. the hard drive should most likely stop to spin and your battery will not drain. I'm pretty sure this also will be fixed soon.
• The thing I, personally, am most concerned about: Bad sound quality. Well, it's not really a BAD sound quality. But it's not as good as one would expect from a $250 product I think. With the right equalizer settings it gets a lot better, but still ... . There are rumors it's hardware-related, which would really suck because it can't be fixed then. I have to say the sound quality is good, it's very harmonic but it lacks deepth if you ask me. Since sound quality seems to be very important to you, that's probably the thing you should have an eye on. There are some threads in this forum about it, there even is a really nice "study" on the classics sound compared to the iPod video. You maybe want to check this out. But in the end I have to say: It's a good sound quality, but it may not be enough for someone with $100 earphones. Best thing would be to go to an apple store and test-listen to a classic to find out.
• The back (which is very nice actually) gets scratched very easily, and so does the screen (I was told). So you really need to buy a protection case. On apples website it costs $40 (or $100 if you prefer the italian leather thingy ;-)), but you can get a good one for $25 if you look around a little (the 5G cases work for the classic either)
• No custom EQ. I really hope it will be added in the future. But there are a lot of presets which should satisfy most people. Still, custom EQ should be standard for such a high-class product in my opinion.
• You are forced to use iTunes. Maybe that's a downside for you, maybe it isn't
That's all I can think of right now. Hope it helps. And sorry if the english may not be that good, I'm actually from germany
hope you find the right thing to do. I, personally, would wait until FW 1.0.3 is released and see what it does.
Message was edited by: m8an