This looks great to me. I currently have a Rio Cali sport player that I run with. I wanted an iPod, but I figured it would last about 100 miles of trail runs. My Rio has a small display, but about the only time I look at it is to see if it’s on and how much battery life is left. The buttons are in a wierd place, and I can never find the right one when I’m running. The iPod Shuffle holds more music, is cheaper, lighter, fits in my pocket, has a rechargable battery, and looks easier to use on the run than my Rio. My Rio needs a special cable and software to load; the iPod Shuffle just plugs directly in to a USB port. I’ll probably wait a few weeks until I can see one in person in a Mac store, but I certainly plan to buy one eventually.
I plan to get one of these as well.
The ipod was just too expensive for my musical needs.
This is great. Make a play list on itunes, plug the dodad into USB and whoosh away I go. Turn on/off the shuffle when I want.
Perfect and for the right price too. Looks great as well.
The battery meter’s the most important item on the display!
I agree. And the iPod Mini has a battery indicator right below the power switch.
You can put a specific playlist onto the iPod Shuffle and flick the doodad on the back to “play in order” mode. I suspect that, should I purchase this, the first playlist would be the 44 file, 233 megabyte unabridged recording of The Return of the King, narrated by Robert Inglis, running about fourteen and a half hours.
The only inconvenience, if any, would be creating individual playlists for individual audiobooks, but that’s extremely trivial to handle.
While I of course don’t recommend doing it, I have accidentally dropped my iPod onto the pavement several times and it still works fine. They’re really quite rugged.
Plus, I run with my flash player in an outside pocket in my running shorts. At 3/4 of an ounce, the iPod Shuffle is very light. At 6.4 ounces, a full-fledged iPod would probably trip me and scare the neighbors when my shorts dropped down to my ankles. Not sure about the iPod mini.
Sounds like you would have a flash problem, alrighty…
Then I should just add a buck to the money I’d spend for an iPod shuffle and spring for the Mini. I think the Mini has the battery meter right on the display, though.
I went back to apple’s site and I see the Shuffle has a ‘battery indicator light’. I wonder how that works? I much prefer a meter.
The battery indicator LED is green for full charge, orange for low, and red for “uh oh,” I believe.
Not sure if I like the no-display feature either, though on the other hand, you can imagine it’s a radio station that only plays the songs you like. 
I might get one anyway just to use it as a USB flash disk with free iPod player. It’d be nice for long airplane trips.
Yeah, fellas, I mean, no matter what, how often do you select a song on your iPod/MP3 player? I don’t do it that often, to be honest, and I almost always have it on random. Seriously I have too many songs to form a playlist that would make me happy at any given moment. This little thing is cool becuase if you are on the bus, doing something where you can’t or don’t want to go search for a song. Honestly, I hate searchign for a song, and I normally just work with playlists.
And for all of the people out there that cite other competitors with a similar price or more storatge or whatever, there are a couple of things to notice here. Firstly you get iTunes, which is an awesome interface. Once I used an Archos interface and it sucked so bad I only loaded it once. The playlists were impossible. iTunes has got to be worth at least 20 dollars in the equation if not more. Then you have the coolness factor which some find valuable too. I mean the iPod mini coming out in colors was such a nod to that market! How many girls wanted a pink one ? So smart those folks at apple have been lately.
I’ve been frustrated by the planned obsolecense in MP3 players where most have built in memory and a retail price that is out of line with the current price for flash memory. Of those that use removable cards none I am aware of use compact flash memory which is the most widely available in largest capacity (no fixed upper limit I am aware of) and lowest cost per megabytge. My new PDA works as a very nice MP3 player but since it uses SD memory I think the largest card I can get is 1GB. Not bad but I’d prefer a compact flash slot so I could drop in a 8GB card when those drop to the $100 range.
Oh, and I have a 128mb TDK Mojo. The display is better than nothing I suppose but Ineed reading glasses for it. Will hold most CDs at high quality bit rate which all I need for going to the gym. If it had a slightly better display and took maybe an SD card and sold for under $100 I’d be happy.
I picked up a Frontier Labs Nex IIa from eBay. heres one. Got a 512 meg card for $35, and it all runs on AAs.
That said, I may switch to an iPod Shuffle, just for the size and convenience, and coolness of course.