Others say...

"Greatest MP3 Player available"
When I was looking for an music player for my birthday, I looked right away at the iPod. My sister, four or five years ago, got the Apple Ipod 20GB 4th Generation and has been pleased with it (never replaced because she doesn't want to use it for videos). A friend of mine told me to look at the Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player Black (2nd Generation) that he has, but I tried using his and the navigation is a bit confusing after being used to the iPod's click wheel. They were about the same price on their sales, plus I also got a free $25 iTunes card at Best Buy.

I was also looking at the iPods Nano and Touch. The Apple iPod nano 8 GB Black (3rd Generation) has 1/10th of the capacity of the 80GB Classic, but was only $50 less, and I couldn't fit all of my music/videos on. The Apple iPod touch 16 GB with Software Upgrade, although it has a much larger screen and more interesting features (including wifi access) and has probably enough space (for now, anyways) , costs $150 more!

I never buy electronic equipment (except maybe accessories) from Amazon because of Best Buy's Geek Squad tech support-plus, if you have a problem, you don't have to go through the pain of trying to return it via Amazon. My iPod actually crashed 3 times after I bought it and I all I had to do to replace it each time was just take a 5 minute drive to the Best Buy, talk to the Geek Squad person who checked it out and deemed me worthy of an exchange. After the fourth crash, I just took it to the Apple store, where they told me it wasn't a problem with the iPod, rather with a corrupt file on it, which I couldn't have found out if I just returned it to Amazon. Since then, I deleted that file and it's been working great ever since.

The earbuds are a pain in the butt to use, but I just got some Sony MDR-Q68LW Clip-on Style Headphone with Retractable Cord. They eliminated the tangling of the ear bud cord. Also, they're more comfortable.

The back can get easily scratched, even from just taking it out of and putting it back into your pocket. This can be easily remedied by purchasing a silicone skin (if you buy a skin made for the 30/60GB fifth generation iPod, you can save a bunch of money, since they're the same size) or you can buy a case for a medium sized camera (like the Lowepro Ridge 10 (Arctic Blue))

"cool item but beware!"
this ipod is slick, but buyers should beware that this 6th gen locks out video to 3rd party assessories & will only work with "apple approved" players of which there are few right now. This means that most of the video docking players (like the sonic impact v55) out there won't work with this until you buy a $50 cable from apple. Pretty underhanded of apple to do this quietly don't you think...

"This Apple iPod is an Instant Classic "
Disclaimer - I base this review off of currently owing the Classic 80 gig, the mini 1 gig, the original iPod Nano 1 gig, Shuffle 1 gig and the original iPod 5 gig. And in the past I have owed the iPod 5th generation 30 gig, the iPod Photo 30 gig and an iPod Mini 4 gig that was lime green and got stolen.

I have owned the iPod classic 80 gig for about four months now and when I read other reviewer's thoughts about this model I was a little worried that it would not live up to expectations. But I made the purchase anyway and decided to make the best of it. The main reason that made the decision to purchase the Classic instead over the iPod Touch is that you get so much more memory for the money with the Classic. And I didn't feel that I much use for the applications that Apple had for the Touch, or the Iphone for that matter. And even with the addition of the Application section of the ITMS the Classic is still a better deal than any of the Touch models.

What makes the Classic worth buying? The screen is a lot clearer and cleaner to view than the previous iPod 5.5/5.0 generations of which I owned also. The metal front of the Classic is easier to keep clean and harder to damage than previous iPod generations have been. The touchpad on the Classic works really well, and is always sensitive to use. In fact, the game Phase that you can buy for the iPod Classic totally relies on the sensitivity of the Classic touchpad and it works great. Never stalls, reboots, slows down or crashes. If you read the first reviewer of the Classic he totally trashes this model iPod, although I have found out that this unit is very reliable and has plenty of space to fit all of your pics, podcasts, movies, games and of course music. The Coverflow use of the Classic software works very well even through many a reviewer it seem to believe that it doesn't load fast enough and is a little bulky for the processor to handle. True, depending on the number of albums that you have on the iPod Classic it takes a second for all of the graphics to load. Currently, I am using 10 gig of the 80 gig capacity and it doesn't bother me if the software needs a second or two to load all of the album pictures that Coverflow uses. Coverflow is really great and makes selecting your music very easy to use.

Also, I have read that other reviewers believe that the sound quality of the Classic was downgraded from the previous models but the must have some super sonic hearing because I can't tell the difference. The battery is also another amazing aspect of this unit because it has never ran out on me even during continuous use of a 7 hour cross country flight last week where I watched a 2 hour movie, played Phase for at least an hour, listened to an hour of an audiobook, watched three 20 minute Anderson Cooper Podcasts among others, looked at pictures and listened to music. Therefore, I used every single aspect of the iPod Classic for hours, numerous times and it has never given me a problem.

If you like buying products that are worth the money are going to add happiness and convenience to your life then the iPod classic is for you.

"Just not good enough"
I wanted to use it as an external drive for my 91gb of music between my mac laptop and my pc. Just to find out you can not do this. You van only have your ipod formated to one-pc or mac-not both. Sound quality is a little worse than my older 30gb video ipod. So I kept my older ipod.

"Exceeds Expectation"
The 6th Generation Ipod Classic exceeded my expectations. Software problems mentioned in some other reviews are non-existent. I did purchase Bose ear pieces due to the fact that the ear pieces which come with the Apple are hard to keep in the ear. I use the unit in the home, car and gym. I did purchase an "incase" leather case which protects the unit and make it easy to clip on belt or waistband, or just put in your pocket.