if you're not interested in buying a ipod shuffle, don't bother reading this. i hope this can help people who are planning to get one.

for the second time in my life i have invested in an ipod. last time it was the 5gig, 1st generation ipod that was actually built only for the mac, but was working fine with PC's with a little help with a program called EphPod.

The other week I decided to buy an ipod shuffle, so that me & chesty could try it out and decide if we wanted to buy a second one, or if not, the "iPod killer" (mp-120) by jensofsweden.com would be an ok alternative.

The reviews that i had read were generally good of the ipod shuffle, i thought it would be just like the big ipods and be easy to dodge the file copy crap protection and use it like any other practical flash mp3 player.

hell no.

- you can only copy music to your ipod (not from, unless you go past itunes, but then you wont be able to listen to the songs while you're on the move, or from the ipod at all for that matter. )

- if you connect the ipod to a computer to recharge, using usb2, it won't work unless it's got iTunes installed.

- your playlist from your ipod will get scrapped if you want to add other songs from a different computer than the one you initially used to add the first songs (why steve, why!!)

- itunes itself wont work with any other portable mp3 players, other than ipod, leaving you no choice.. :-( too bad if you like itunes but not the shuffle for instance!)

- the usb port on the player itself is bulky, and you'll probably have to disconnect anything else connected to the surrounding ports while updating / recharging, unless you get a separate USB cable.

- if you decide to use the ipod as a memory stick, to store documents or other files, you won't be able to retrieve them if you connect it to a computer with itunes installed on it.

another item that was supposed to make my life easier, but naah..

don't get me wrong i love the design of the apple products nowadays. maybe it's because they are hiding horrible things on the inside..

i will post another article on the minimac once i get it.

please post alternatives to the itunes / ipod software / firmware, for the ipod shuffle

dreamlist

- work with more then two computers without deleting playlists/ music files.
- let you copy files onto AND off the player.
- recharging without itunes installed.
- drag drop tunes directly to player (and let you play them on the move), and let you store other items that can be retrieved on another computer running itunes.

oh.. forgot the good things..

- it looks beautiful
- it plays music when you push the play button (if you have put the songs on using itunes!!)
- you can sleep with it on all night and it still has battery power the next day. (at least after the first time you've recharged it ;-) )

take my tip and wear headphones.. and remember this is NSFW!

no video, just sound.

http://www.big-boys.com/articles/lindsayphone.html

Just came back from a whicked week and a half in Champery with slowmotion. Amazing snow, food and whine has left me a few pounds heavier. We also met up with some of slowmotions friends, true alpine goats, who were kind enough to babysit some city foaks. And that was precisely what they did. For a good part of the first week i had been staring at a mountain which i wanted to climb however never deared to. One morning after a beautiful sleep and peacefull breakfast we got a phonecall from Julien, the master goat. He told us that we were going to climb it... On hearing the news i had to run to the toilet and releave myself of some heavies... nervosity started to kick in.

Next thing i know, i find myself on a 60° slope klinging on to some loose snow and slipping each step i take on the icy surface of the mountain slope. Slomo, Julien and his girl Sofie are 15m in front racing to the top. I am shitting myself. Worse turns to terrible as we enter a rocky part. Stones come loose as soon as you touch them and the sight of the boulders underneath doesn't really confort the mind. We make another ten meters progress and the semi-snow turns to ice. At this point Slomo can start to feal something wrong in her stomach and decides she needs to go back down. I struggle further and finally get to the pyramid shaped cresent (picture).

Julien takes a look at me and decides he will carry my skis to the top. I thought it a good idea to crawl to the top. And so we progress: me on all fours with my ass in the air but julien with snowboard and skis as well as sofie hopping up the the mountain as if it were their living room. At this point Slomo has decided she's not feeling too well and has, to the amazement of some british turists, laid a pizza right next to a restaurant down below. Meanwhile i am at the "zigzag" (where the dude is on the picture), slip and get my skiboots stuck in some rocks, in other words nearly fell down the cliffs on the top left picture. I'm thinking "thank god i got the panic shits before we left". Another 15 minutes of utter panic and we get to the top.

The best thing was the ride down... it would have been amazing had it not been so windy the night before. Cardboard snow met us as we skiid down the face.