Others say...

"pretty good"
this item is worth the price although the volume isn't a loud as the original I already have.

"I hate I-pod"
I bought this crap about 3 years ago, in this 3 years I waited for a moment to tag all my mp3's but I never find that time, then I find a folder browsing mp3 player and throw this junk out and I am glad that I did that.

So here is why I hate I-Pod

No folder browsing: You have to add tag on your every single old mp3's. there is some other mp3 player that they have this function for less, so you can see all the folders and mp3's like your your pc or mac. "No folder browsing" is very disturbing if you have mixed mp3's.

I-tunes is horrible: you have to use I-tunes to upload music, no drag and drop from drive to drive. I tunes is slow and useless. it is also making you pc slower even if you are not even using it.

File protection: if you upload your mp3's you can have them back to you pc or mac. With any folder browsing mp3 players you can do so.

No volume button: Yes Ipod looks cool but if you need to volume down quickly you have to wait 2 seconds, because volume button is also same as navigation. if you need instant mute you have to unplug your headphone.
and you look lame when you do that because you don't know where you are going to put the unplugged headphone jack.

Navigation button is too sensitive: if you are in the car, car is shaking so %50 of the time you are going to pick the wrong artist or song.
I had some moments that I was almost going to throw this junk out from the window.

Video is a joke: screen is too slow, forget about watching movies, you can watch just for 5 minutes then your eyes get crossed.

Where is the radio, sound recording? my new folder browing mp3 player has this function and works very good.
I don't want advertise what I have just search for folder browsing mp3 players, there is tons of them in the market.

"Precocious child of the Mp3 player business---but still a child"
I've had my iPod for quite a long time now, and it works good. I like it well enough, bla bla bla, you're not reading this review for the good things. You already know what makes it good.

So what makes it bad?

I admit I'm biased against Apple, but I ended up with an iPod anyway... first and foremost, it dislikes Windows in a subtle way---no WMA support. Thankfully, it converts WMAs to MP3s of the same bit rate automatically.

So then why is the iPod (or at least, this generation) a "precocious child"? Or rather, a retarded adult?

For one, I had a brand X MP3 player before this one. It had no video screen, was still the sort of black and white Gameboy-style screen, but it was flawless.

iPod is flawed.

1) It is sluggish. Often times it takes a long time to load a playlist, or randomize songs. When I am rapidly skipping through songs, it will freeze up while playing up to three seconds of the song I want to skip before skipping it. This really sucks.

2) It freezes easily. My Brand X mp3 player frozen on me only once, and that was because I dropped it---iPod freezes whenever it wants, though loves to do so when I'm skipping through songs at a leisurely pace.

3) The buttons' advanced functions are barely responsive. If the iPod freezes, rather than press a tiny reset button, it makes me go through this process of flicking the Hold switch on and off, then pressing and holding the center button and the menu button for a few seconds. This almost never works the first three times. The buttons are so close together to every other button, I end up accidentally pressing the "Next" or "Previous" button along with it, and cause nothing to happen.

4) The Off button is barely responsive. Sometimes it's a crapshoot to even have the off button work at all. The Off button is the Play button... yeah. You have to press it and hold it down for a few seconds. I have once literally pressed and held it for 30 whole seconds with no response. In quick situations or emergencies when it must be turned off, this becomes a big problem.

5) Volume control. In order to increase or decrease volume, the iPod MUST be on, and you must swirl the round part around. As opposed to my Brand X MP3 player which had the volume control on the side and could be adjusted independently from the tracking buttons. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT when you need to turn the volume UP, and you're in the middle of scouring your albums---you have to wait 30 seconds for the albums to drift off back to the Now Playing in order to do this, or rushed ALL THE WAY BACK to the main menu and Now Playing to do this.

6) It does not come with an adaptor to plug it in to recharge. For an entire year, I believed I could only recharge this from my computer, before my mother bought a wall-jack adaptor for her iPhone. It's compatible with the iPod as well.

7) Playlists cannot be named except in iTunes---and even then I didn't figure it out until 6 months in, because the Right Click menu had no "rename" option---I had to figure it out by double clicking on New Playlist. Playlists also cannot have songs added or removed from them once created, except in iTunes.

8) Randomizations only randomize the songs ONCE---after that, the track listing is pretty much set.

9) The clicky swirly thing is a hassle to deal with when trying to select individual options, and the center button is so close to the swirly round part that when pressing it during a song (to skip ahead, or to see the album cover up close, or to give it a star rating) I often end up accidentally making the swirly thing move---so when I'm trying to rate the song, it skips ahead, and then goes right back to the Now Playing so I have to click the center button AGAIN.



Those are pretty much most, or all of the problems I've experienced with iPod. It's not enough to make me stop using it, but it's enough to make me not want to buy it again if I break or lose this one.

Oh yeah, I remember now, the "Brand X" mp3 player in question was a Creative Zen Touch 20 GB MP3 Player

"It's an i-pod."
There's not much more to say, LOL. It's an i-pod, it works, holds a lot of music.

"Apple Ipod"
Didn't care for it - bought a Zune instead - it did more had a radio, bigger screen ... and more storage - easier to download and find music. Able to grab music and not worry about Apple's proprietary m4p format... no converting needed.
Buy Zune!