A new addition to the family.

Saturday, November 4th, 2006 @ 2:38 am

No, no, not a new addition to our family as in a baby. It’s a new addition to our family of iPods. This brings the household iPod count up to the odd number of three.

That is right, as soon as they were available, I was in line to buy a new iPod shuffle. I couldn’t help myself, so small and metallic and that clip..brilliant! I really think that the clip is the selling point to this little device. Without the clip, it’s likely to get lost in your pocket or end up in your bowl full of loose change, only to be found years later when you are rummaging around for a quarter. Anyway, how about my impressions so far.

My initial reaction is that it is super small. So small that whenever I show it to someone their first reaction is a comment about it’s size (or lack thereof). It is hard to believe that this is a 1 gigabyte music player. The aluminum shell is very smooth and it feels very solid, in the lightest way possible. The audio quality is great and it is easy to navigate the controls with a single hand.

I bought this mainly for walking the dog while listening to podcasts. I used it on a walk this evening and it performed beautifully. I easily adjusted the volume as we approached busy streets, fast-forwarded through commercials and could pause the audio when I needed to speak to someone along the way. It’s like have a remote control for an iPod without the bulk of the actual iPod.

As I said before, the clip is the most brilliant aspect of this device. The original shuffle was cool, but what are you going to do with it? Put it in your pocket? Wear it like a necklace? With this thing, you just clip it on your pocket and you’re off.

My only disappointment with it is the way iTunes syncs music. For some reason, it will not autofill podcasts, only music. This means manually dragging the podcasts I want on the player each time I head out. Not a deal-breaker, but not the most convenient.

All in all, I am very happy with my purchase and look forward to many walks with the dog with the sounds of twit.tv pod..er..netcasts filling my ears.

Update: I have found that you can autofill podcasts. What you have to do is uncheck the ‘Skip When Shuffling’ option for the podcasts. Unfortunately, all the podcasts that you download from iTunes have this option already checked, so you would have to uncheck it for each new podcast. I will probably stick to the manual transfer method.