iPod Nanos- experience?

[thedelihaus]

After failure of my hard-drive based iPod ( http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=106087 ), I'm considering buying a used 1st generation or 2nd generation flash-drive based Nano.

I feel the weakest link on the iPods are the hard drives. flash drives are much more stable for a portable device.

Besides the weak battery life (14 hours) on the early 1st generation nanos, any other issues?

any experiences with the nanos? Good or bad?

 

[House de Kris]

I've got a 1G Nano that I've had for about a year now. Not sure what generation that makes it. As far as the music playing operation goes, I've never had an issue with it. It is a great player with a nice feel, and always behaves as I expect. Although small, the display is very good. My only problem with my Nano has been getting music into it. But, since you already have experience with iPods, this should not be a hindrance to you.

 

[RichPA]

I bought my wife an 8G Nano for Christmas, and she loves it. I found iTunes frustrating at first, but once I figured it out, loading CDs on the Nano was no problem. The sound quality at iTunes default sampling is fine for her use, which is primarily while she's at the gym.

 

[70salesguy]

ipod nano

MUCH as I hate to admit it, I bought a 2gig nano a few months back.

The reason was that it had an 500 song capacity. I figure that is 50 cds.

I travel within a 2-3 hour range often in my Tahoe and although I have XM radio which I enjoy, I figured being able to carry 50 cds worth of music in such a small package would be terrific!

I bought mine for $99 including shipping direct from the Apple web site. It was a factory refurb and carried a full warranty. I received it a few days later and it looks brand new to me!

Other than having to learn how to do the itunes thing, I have been very pleased with it. Once you figure out the itunes - it's easy. I play it through my factory Tahoe stereo using a cassette adapter. Occasionally I use it by itself with the included earbuds.

I highly recommend it!

 

[Elfasto]

My daughter has the 2nd gen 2gig nano. So far it has survived being dropped, tossed across a classroom, left in a hot car over a weekend, and generally being abused. It has a few scratches, but still plays well.

 

[cabinover]

The 1GB shuffle I bought for my daughter is a nice little piece. It's nice enough that I'd been taking it to work and hooking up to the system there. Then she noticed it one day. Now she won't let me take it.

 

[arm013]

my 40g 4th gen ipod just took a dump. From my research I have found that the software apple uses is what corrupts the harddrives. A dirty little secret apple doesn't want you to know. It might be in your best interest to buy a new hardrive or hold left arrow and select button until the diagnostic screen appears. Scroll down to the prompts and try reseting or scanning the hardrive. Could take all day. But it could fix your problem and save you having to buy a new ipod.

 

[drknstrmyknight]

The drives used in the full size ipods are pretty stock OEM Toshibas.
Every one I have replaced had bad sectors from being abused (dropped, punted, kicked, etc.) The Apple logo doesn't mean custom firmware AFAIK.

The low level drive doesn't care about the operating system and the operating system is not able to modify the drive, it is servo-written at the factory. You CAN screw up the partition and file system with a wonky USB or firewire connection on your PC, but I've to see a working drive that you couldn't restore once you got it on a solid connection.

 

[thedelihaus]

I actually fixed my iPod a few months back- this post was originally written back in March.

Here's the trick that fixed it- one needs to put (and I'm serious) a small piece of foam or some use a folded business card, inside on the back of the hard drive, then re-assemble the unit.

What happens is the drives are made so tiny, so small, that they are easily warped a bit, and the drive gets internally "pinched", and doesn't work well.

There's a site who does this for a $40 fee (includes shipping both ways, and a shipping sleeve), and can fix 98% of them this way.

sounds like I'm kidding, but I'm not. My 60 gig iPod is working fine now, after I tried a modified version of this repair. Took me all of 15 minutes.

Crazy, eh?

 

[thedelihaus]

...It might be in your best interest to buy a new hardrive or hold left arrow and select button until the diagnostic screen appears. Scroll down to the prompts and try reseting or scanning the hardrive. Could take all day. But it could fix your problem and save you having to buy a new ipod.

You are correct in this, and it saved me an embarrasing step once. Note to iPod users- this step varies between iPod generations, so check which generation you have, then look up the proper procedure. Some, it's the pause button, not the left arrow- I think that was on the 2nd or 3rd genertation I had prior, but I can't recall.

my 40g 4th gen ipod just took a dump. From my research I have found that the software apple uses is what corrupts the harddrives. A dirty little secret apple doesn't want you to know...

That'd be a great class action lawsuit if true, but alas I feel it's most likely corporate rumors.

That said, I love Apple products, but I'm getting less than thrilled by some of their practices in the corporate world lately. They're supposed to be the "good computer company". It'd be nice to see them be that way.