What Size is your ipod?

[Chad Pater]

And do you come close to filling it? Does anyone find the new video capabilities useful? I think pictures storage would come in useful at time away from the pc....
(Valentines day approaches:) )

[Dave Carey]

Chad,
I bought mine about 18 months ago just before the picture version came out. My practice (not by design) is to buy an Apple product shortly before the release of a new, improved version! I think mine is generation 3. I bought the 40G version, have all my CD's and more on it and have used up about 9 1/2 G. Would be different of course if I was loading video. A friend with the latest version has not found memory to be an issue but battery life is. He travels a lot and on a long plane ride gets through about 2 to 2 1/2 episodes of Lost before the battery fades (it still has enough power for music but not for the video.) So you might consider an auxillary battery as part of the "entry price." Bottom line though, I love it. Use it at the gym all the time and have the JBL player at work.

[John Shuk]

I just bought an XM reciever that is portable and can save 5 hours of content just in case you can't get a signal. It can be worn like a walkman type deal and has a rechargeable battery. So far I'm lovin it. It is a better answer to the IPOD for me. I was totally sold on the Ipod before but this is easier for me. It qualifies as a gloat as well. I bought the Pioneer Airware. It retails about $179 and there sometimes is a $50 rebate. Since I have Directv I got it for $49. No rebate no hassle. Just another option. Of course no video.

[Glenn Clabo]

I have the black 60G...and am a little surprised at how much I watch videos becsue of the small screen...but it is so clear it's awesome.

I also use it to dump photos when I'm away from my computer so it varies on how much memory I have used...like right now I have 3233 songs...46 videos...and 100+ photos. This adds up to only ~22G. I could probably get by with a 40G...but I just didn't want to take a chance.

[Rob Russell]

Bought my wife a 4GB Nano 2 weeks ago. The size/form factor of the device was what she liked. We'll get 1100+ songs on it for her which will be plenty.

I'm setting up a system so that all of our CDs will be stored on, and LPs digitized to, a hard drive-based music server. If it turns out she wants to take some of the LPs and switch out songs now and then, I'll just have a bank of MP3s on our PC and she can shuffle songs around on her Nano at will.

We didn't get a price break, but did have $75 in Best Buy Reward Zone coupons that we had to use, so that helped a bit.

[Tom A Walker]

I got a 20gb iPod for Christmas two ears ago. I love having the iPod but I do run into space issues. I can't fit everything on it but I find part of the reason for this is that digital music is so easy to aquire that my collection has grown a lot just since I got the iPod.

If I were buying again now, I would get the video iPod. If money weren't an issue, I'd get the 60gb but the reality is, its easy enough to put music/videos on and off the iPod that I wouldn't worry if $$ forced me to the cheaper 30gb.

[David Fried]

I bought a 40 GB iPod as a present for a friend who was going to work in Ecuador. She took all her music, friends music, etc. and has been collecting local music down there. Three years later she hasn't filled it up!

I don't have one for myself, yet.

Dave Fried

[Chad Pater]

Thanx a lot guys. I'm looking/leaning toward the 30gb video one. I don't think the video is going to be a huge thing for us but i have been wrong before about how something I buy will get used. This is the first step into ipod/dig music for us so I thought I'd try and learn from the groups experience.

[Tyler Howell]

20GB
I use it to transfer files home to work on as well.
only about 8 gig in use for music. Was lost with out it while it was in the shop for a tune up.

[Mike Evertsen]

I'm still in the eight track days :D

http://www.onlineathens.com/images/070600/8track5.jpg

[Jeff Pilcher]

I'll see your 8 track and raise you a Kenner Close-N-Play

http://epilcher.com/files/closenplay.jpg

[Keith Outten]

20GB IPod, about 8 gig used so far.

[Jim Tobias]

I received a 30G Black video version for Christmas from my daughter and her fiance. I have loved it!! Music in the shop, at work, video on a plane or waiting in the Dr. office. It is a very user friendly gadget.

Jim

[Mike Evertsen]

how about a 45rpm record player

http://www.everythingradio.com/images/6JY1B.jpg

[Tim Morton]

30gb and I have used about 18gb....don't forget to take compression into consideration here. Apple defaults to 128kbps.....and if SQ is important to you you will want to have room to bump that up. So like anything else, buy as much as you can afford...for me the nano and the mini just don't hold enough songs to make them worth considering.

[tod evans]

never having seen an "ipod" let alone heard one, what`s the sound like if a fellow plugs it into a stereo? same as a cd, better or worse? i can really tell the difference between an mp3 and cd so do these creatures store the full file or just mp3`s, or perhaps some other format? thanks for any advice...tod

[Bill Lewis]

AFAIK just mp3's. And yes the quality of an mp3 can vary depending on the sampling rate of the rip. Better sampling rates will produce pretty good mp3's but the files get bigger too. I've heard some pretty cruddy mp3's.

[Lee DeRaud]

And yes the quality of an mp3 can vary depending on the sampling rate of the rip. Better sampling rates will produce pretty good mp3's but the files get bigger too.Just to add a data point to that: before ripping my entire CD collection (600+ discs) to MP3, I ran a few tests - rip to MP3, burn back to audio CD, A-B compare with original. At 320bps I can't tell the difference played through my (IMHO) pretty decent speakers. At 160bps there's a difference but the MP3 is still pretty good, and I doubt you'd notice played through typical iPod earplugs. The 320bps setting works out to roughly a 4:1 compression or close to 80GB in my case, but at 160bps the whole thing would still fit on one of the bigger iPods.

Side question: this whole exercise was to free up space in my Sony CD carousels (by consolidating discs, deleting duplicates, etc), so I went with the higher sample rate. If I should get an iPod-like widget in the future, is there software available that will batch-resample the MP3 files I've got now? (One-at-a-time is a really bad idea: we're talking 6300+ files...probably faster to re-rip the whole set.)