Well, after 21 months of ownership, the harddrive on my 3rd gen, 40GB ipod died on me last week, taking with it all of the music I’ve added to it since my last 8 DVD backup in January (Apple actually has the gaul to assume that all of their ipod owners keep 40GB of their harddrives devoted to backing up their music!). From the looks of things, I was lucky to even have mine survive this long…most ipod owners seem to have theirs die while the warranty is still good.
This leaves me in a dilemna, since NOT having a high capacity portable music player is not an option for me. For $277 I can get mine repaired…and by repaired they mean throwing my ipod into a bin marked “40GB ipods to repair” and taking another one out of the “repaired 40GB ipods” and giving it to me along with a 90 day warranty. Or, I can turn mine in to be recycled (probably going into that same bin) and get 10% off a new one, giving me a new 60GB ipod (and yes, I could use the additional space) for $360…more like $419 if I get the extended warranty (and that’s assuming that my new one makes it past 12 months again), and more like $450 after tax is added on. By charging for an extended warranty, Apple’s pretty much encouraging their users to back up and then “accidentially” drop their ipod when it reaches 11 months…maybe not such a bad idea?
I suppose the smart suggestion is to not buy any new ipod at all, and get something from a third party company. Unfortunately I also bought into the “AAC is better than MP3” stuff that itunes was shoving down my throat, so that isn’t a very viable option for me.
Do you have a cite for that? I’m not seeing a whole lot of “my ipod’s drive failed and Apple sucks” posts in dejanews. It looks like you can buy a hard drive and do the repair yourself for around 100 dollars less than the repair price you were quoted.
It is true that any device with a hard drive is eventually going to fail – the only question is when. 21 months is on the short end of the expected lifetime, but iPods generally take more of a beating than, say, a laptop hard drive would.
Or, if you want to avoid the risk of future hard drive failures, you could always go with a flash memory mp3 player.
$277 for a repair!! I spent 2 bucks more than that to buy a brand new 60gig Creative Labs Zen Xtra. Probably not a good option for you though, doesn’t support AAC and it’s quite a bit bigger, which you’ll feel after using the small iPod.
I was seriously considering demanding a refund for the piece of crap, until I discovered that the reason it wasn’t playing songs all the way through was because of some flaw in the DRM in the AAC format. (Or maybe it was a flaw in the iPod with respect to running AAC songs.)
I converted them all to MP3’s and now they play fine.
So I was reduced to what was probably an illegal act in order to get my legally purchased music and legally purchased music player to actually work as advertised.
Apple will most likely never get another dime out of me. Hell, I’m so fed up I still might try to return the thing.
I purchased a 20 gb ipod from a friend for only 60 dollars( and he really only wanted 50 but I only had 3 twenties) and he included the itrip fm transmitter which is fine when I’m just listening to music in my room. It already looked a little rough so I have no clue how long it will last but since I didn’t spend much its not a big deal. Plus now I want a color one!!!
That is, if I didn’t already have a PSP of course, which is good enough for me, being a tonne more versatile than any of those machines. It’s cool to have thousands of songs on a tiny little device, but in the end I only listen to one or two selections of ca 20 songs anyway, and its far easier to just copy onto it what I’m into than manage and back up such a stupendous collection on a hdd or DVDs etc. So I found that 512mb is already more than enough for me, which is filled with mp3s only half, the rest is games (Homebrew that is, for ebooks and so on -
I have the old Firmware that can run homebrew, but the new FW has a browser with which you can also look at pages offline, meaning you can easily bring along an ebook in HTML format with picture and everything, which is great), movies and pictures. , and if I didn’t have a PSP, a 256mb MP3 player would have probably sufficed.
The iPod never appealed to me - just too much money for the brand and image, and not enough for the quality. The sound quality of the AAC format better than MP3? Well, that depends on the encoding. The songs on iTunes certainly aren’t good enough yet
I’ve always wanted to buy songs legally like that, so I test these services hoping they’ll do what I want them too, and iTunes comes close in that regard - but right now you are better off buying a song there, and then download a better sounding mp3 illegally.
I’m thinking about buying an MP3 player. I need a player that’s compatible with Napster, plus I’d feel like a lemming if I bought an iPod. I’m thinking that one of the smaller hard drive players (about 5 gigs or so) should suit my needs. I liked the Rio Carbon, but I hear that Rio is getting out of the MP3 market, and I don’t want to buy a player that I won’t be able to get serviced. Now I’m looking at the Creative Zens, which look good, although I’ll have to get used to those touch controls. I’m not ready to buy anything yet, so I’m going to wait and see what comes out before Christmas.
Are you sure the hard drive is really truly dead? Mine suffered some data corruption a few months ago. Songs wouldn’t play, but it still mounted as a hard drive. I copied everything I could to another drive (minus a few corrupted songs), then ran iPod Updater software which reset everything. Copied the songs back, and everything so far has been fine. Sounds like your iPod is in worse condition, but you never know…
Word. This is not some magical mystical amazing droplet of heaven, despite what the carefully researched and artfully photographed ad campaigns featuring ex-Starbucks employees who first broke into the world of professional modeling as United Colors of Benetton icons might say. ( cackle )
It’s a hard drive. A small hard drive. With a fairly user friendly interface. I’d do just as drewbert said. Regard it as an external hard drive. Back up the material. Do a software and driver update. Then reload your data. You may be pleasantly surprised.
I have to admit that as a spinning hard drive ( unlike flash drive players or the new iPod Shuffle), the ad campaigns have had people jogging along with it strapped to their arm. I’m sorry but technology just ain’t there yet. Yes you can do it. Yes it will play without skipping, unlike a CD player. But no it will not last as long because of repeated jarring to the mechanism that spins the hard disk platter as fast as it does.
They die fast because they are used exactly as owners are told they can be used- in ways that are patently against the proper and gentle ( and genteel ) handling of any highspeed hard drive when in motion.
Heck, I remember when you couldn’t move a P.C. without placing into the 5 1/4 inch floppy drive a special “drive parking card” to protect it against jarring and damaging the drive heads. But then, I’m old.
Yeah, unfortunately, it IS the hard drive. I’ve had enough harddrives die on me to know that “click click…” sound, and when I entered the secret diagnostic mode, everything passed except for the HDD test, which would freeze it. Most of the other posts I saw about dead harddrives were at least able to turn on disk mode and/or mount it in their computer, but no such luck for me.
I’m gonna go get my new one today at lunch time…as well as a nice sturdy case.
You should wait and see what they’re announcing today - there are all kinds of rumors about.
And get a bigger hard drive for your computer. The iPod isn’t meant to be your only storage for your music collection. Too easy to lose or have stolen.
They couldn’t have had this a month ago, when I bought my shuffle? The 2 GB model would be *perfect[/i[ for me. I ahve less than 2 ggis of music. I bought the 1 GB shuffle, and carry about 75% of my music. For $50 more, I could have had that thing of beauty.
I mgiht have to sell my shuffle on eBay and use the profits to help finance buying one of those.
I can’t wait until devices are made with IBM’s Millipede chip. A square chip measuring 2.4 centimetres on a side should be able to store 125 gigabytes. There could be players with the iPod shuffle’s form-factor with 125 gig of storage!!!
Here’s an article about the chip:
Last I heard, they were still looking for a partner to manufacture the thing.
