"ipod" The more I use the iPod, the more I love it. For the last few years, I've listened to talk radio -- either Howard Stern, Kevin & Beane, or NPR. The music on the radio mostly sucks, and stations like KROQ play the same inane 40 songs in a rotation. Classic rock stations, with thousands of great songs to choose from, stick to the safest 100. My car has a CD player, but it only holds 1 and likes to skip. Plus, I have to remember to feed it or I hear the same 13 songs for a month.
Now, imagine if you suddenly have your favorite 2000 songs whereever you go: in the car, in the gym, in an airplane or even in bed. It's awesome. Seeing how radio stations rotate between about 40 to 100 songs, that's like having 20 radio stations designed just for your personal taste.
The iPod organizes the songs in a number of ways: by artist, album, genre (alternative, country, classic, punk, rock, etc), composer or any arbitrary catalog you care to build. It plays books on tape too. Listen to the songs in the order they appeared on an album, or listen to all 2000 randomly.
I have the 10GB model. Has a 10 hour battery life, and you just recharge by syncing with your computer via firewire. Firewire transfers about 1 ALBUM every 10 seconds, it's amazing (200 times faster than USB which is common on all other mp3 players). Really easy to transfer music -- as soon as you plugin that same firewire cable, it downloads all your new tunes.
The only weakness is the when playing it through your car stereo -- most likely your options are either to hook it up through a cassette adapter (newer model cars have done away with tape decks) or a radio transmitter (which transmits to your car's FM radio). Sound quality suffers with both. The ideal method is to hook it directly through an RCA jack, but most car stereos don't offer the option.
Highly recommended.
