Okay, so you're reading about the new iPod everywhere. I'll make this brief
1 and just touch on a few items that I didn't mention in my previous post:
- Battery. Actually, I did mention this previously, but I have a hard time believing the battery is going to make it to the rated 10 - 15 hour mark (playing audio). I use the unit periodically through the day, and when I have a good 15 hour chunk of time to kill...
- Screen. It's beautiful like everybody is saying, and it does scratch easily like everyone is saying. I've transmogrified one of those Palm screen protectors into an iPod screen protector. Just measure, cut, and stick. It works great, and provides an other wordly sheen to the screen.
- Video. I have to admit, it works quite well but sucks the battery quickly. Below are some trailer park screen grabs of the "Freedom" video by King's X. The iPod kept everything in sync, sounded great, and didn't look half bad. The video had to be transcoded, of course, which degraded the quality a bit. I have not had a chance (or the extra money for the cable) to plug it into the TV yet.
As far as video conversion goes, you can pay 30 bucks for QuickTime Pro and enjoy spending the whole afternoon converting a five minute video, or you can hop over to PSPVideo9.com and get it done in significantly less time. The whole MP4 vs. H.264 thing is lost on me, so don't ask. - I'm still rather steamed that another docking station/cable setup is going to be another 40 bucks. Maybe somebody like Belkin has a cheaper alternative.
In all, still pretty happy with it. There is a review over at dapreview.net which sums up the pros and cons nicely.
And while you're sitting there, surfing and using precious company resources, how about checking that video of Freedom2 out? I can't remember where I borrowed it from, so grab it here until somebody tells me to bring it down, or my bandwidth goes over it's limit3.
[1] This didn't turn out to be that brief, did it?[2] Plays on iPod, like, fer shur, totally! (tm)[3] Hah, if only.